


The Ongoing Investigation Into the Question "Are Ghosts Real?"

by kenzz_95



Series: Ghost Hunting Verse [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Bonding, Despite the title not actually a spin off buzzfeed unsolved, Ghosts maybe, M/M, Pre-Slash, Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25436413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenzz_95/pseuds/kenzz_95
Summary: Jim gets into urban exploring and ghost hunting during his second year of the Academy, and winds up dragging a reluctant Leonard McCoy, who very much so does not believe in ghosts thank you very much, along with him. It turns out, much to his dismay, Bones has a bit of a knack for it. Bonding and shenanigans ensue.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Series: Ghost Hunting Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948540
Comments: 47
Kudos: 62





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome! This right here is the result of a quarantine spent doing nothing but watching Buzzfeed Unsolved and reading McKirk fan fiction, which, of course, begged the question "what if Jim and Bones went ghost hunting together?" This fic attempts to answer that question, asked by nobody but me. (Despite the original inspiration, this doesn't have a lot in common with Buzzfeed Unsolved other than the ghost hunting bit).
> 
> This is also somehow the first ever fic I've posted for any fandom, despite having read fic for 10 years and written for 3. I'm just having fun writing this and decided to share it. That being said, um, please be nice I'm Soft.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

“Bones!” Jim exclaimed, bursting into their shared room one evening as Leonard was just trying to study while slowly sipping a finger of bourbon. There were times when Leonard regretted agreeing to be Jim’s roommate for their second year at the Academy...okay, he never really did and he probably should stop lying to himself, but he was trying to  _ study _ , dammit.

“What?” Leonard snapped, attempting to cover any hints of affection up in his voice with annoyance. It was easier, even though he was pretty sure Jim saw through him at this point. He spun around in his chair and found himself face to face with what was clearly Jim Kirk with a plan, which was a dangerous prospect at the best of times. The two had been friends for a year and a half now, Leonard knew that burning look in Jim’s bright blue eyes. It usually ended up getting him an appointment with Leonard’s medical tricorder and a hypo or three. 

“No, I’m not interested,” Leonard said, preempting whatever Jim was about to try to drag him into.

“I haven’t even said anything yet!” Jim protested and Leonard rolled his eyes,

“So you’re telling me you’re dressed like an old fashioned cat burglar for a laid back night on the town? I don’t think so. I know trouble when I see it.”   
“Oh, you love trouble,” Jim said with a smirk. More of his casual flirting. God, there was something about the kid that seemed to require him to flirt with everyone who moved, just for fun. It was mostly just irritating.

“Don’t push your luck, kid,” Leonard said.

“And this isn’t ‘cat burglar’, ya know,” Jim said, spinning around in his boots on the floor, “We need to get more old movies into you.”

“No thanks,” Leonard said gruffly, but Jim was probably right about the outfit. Leonard stood by his assessment, though, that this was not Jim’s typical “going out for a harmless night at a local bar” look. He wore boots, dark pants, a deep maroon shirt, and his favorite leather jacket. This was Jim’s “getting into trouble” look and Leonard knew him well enough to know it when he saw it. “Seriously, Jim, what are you up to?” Leonard continued, fixing his best friend with what he thought was a threatening look. He thought it was the same one he shot interns at Starfleet Medical that made them scurry away, but it never seemed to work on Jim the same way. He always either took it as a challenge or found it amusing. Or both. Tonight seemed like a “both” kind of night, if the look on Jim’s face was any indication.

“Let’s go out,” Jim suggested, “I know that test you’re studying for isn’t ‘til next week. And you’ll ace it like you always do. So let’s go out, blow off some steam!”

“Go where? Because, I reiterate, that is not your normal going out look.”

“So, haven’t you been wondering where I’ve been going lately?”

“Not really. I’m not your dad, I don’t care where you go as long as you don’t end up back here half dead. And you’re always going out, what else is new?”

“Well,” Jim said, hopping up to sit on Leonard’s desk, which had the surface touch screen enabled so his ass “accidentally” closed out what Leonard was reading. “I’ve been doing some urban exploring.”

“I don’t know what that means but I know enough to know it’s a terrible idea.”

“Ya know, going to old abandoned places and looking around! Seeing the secrets this town has to offer! There’s a lot of interesting things right in our own backyard!”

“So you’ve been breaking and entering?”

“No! Not usually! Just sometimes. Anyways, I found somewhere real cool and I want you to come with me to check it out.”

“I’m not breaking into an abandoned building with you.”

“Come on, Bones. It’ll be fun! And besides, I’m going regardless, and you know some of those old buildings aren’t the most stable…”

“Are you trying to manipulate me into coming with you?” Leonard asked, narrowing his eyes at his friend.

“Is it working?” Jim asked cheerily.

“No, Jim,” Leonard declared simply. Sometimes being friends with Jim reminded him of the summer as a kid when he had made it his mission to befriend the cat that lived in his grandparents’ barn. The cat hadn’t grown up around people, it had just wandered onto the farm one spring, but the creature had never really been scared of people, it just didn’t know how to behave around them. Specifically, for some reason the only way it knew to get attention from him was biting him, and it had taken a 10 year old Leonard half the summer to teach the cat that there were other ways to get attention that were more pleasant for everyone. Jim was like that cat, in a way, although Leonard was sure Jim would resent the comparison if he ever said it aloud. He didn’t know a ton about Jim’s childhood, as a point of fact he didn’t discuss it but what little he had said had allowed Leonard to gather that his mom was off-planet a lot and his step-dad was quite the asshole. Leonard got the feeling that nobody had ever really shown Jim how to have meaningful relationships when he was younger, and one thing Leonard was determined to do was never to let Jim use all the weird and unhealthy ways to get attention that he had resorted to in childhood on him. He knew Jim didn’t say things like that to be mean, he just didn’t know how else to get what he wanted sometimes. He was getting a lot better, though, and Leonard thought he deserved at least some of the credit for that. After all, he couldn’t count the amount of times in their first year when he had told Jim “that’s not how you treat someone you supposedly care about”.

“It’s not going to work, is it?” Jim asked, pulling Leonard out of his thoughts.

“Does it ever?” Leonard countered and Jim just shrugged. 

“Come on, Bones, come with me,” Jim said after a moments’ silence, “I’ve barely seen you lately, you’ve been so busy picking up all those extra shifts at Starfleet Medical. Let’s do something.”

As that was about as close as sober Jim could get to a straight request, and really Leonard  _ did _ want to hang out with Jim, he sighed and stood up from his chair, “Fine. But no breaking and entering. And no unstable buildings. And I’m not helping you if you step on a 100 year old rusty nail and get tetanus or something.”

“That it?” Jim laughed, “You sure do know how to take the fun out of it. And you should know I’m not going to get  _ tetanus _ , you gave me my vaccine for it yourself like 6 months ago.”   
“Forgive me if all the times I’ve treated your accident prone ass start to run together,” Leonard drawled as he searched through his closet for an appropriate jacket. He wasn’t about to get all dressed up in some special trouble making outfit like Jim was, but it was February in San Francisco and he needed a jacket.

“That one was preventative. I think,” Jim said, grabbing Leonard’s comms unit off the desk with one hand and Leonard’s wrist with another, “Come on, if we hurry we won’t have to wait for a shuttle.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 is here! This is a pretty tight turnaround from chapter 1, and I wouldn't call this typical for me just FYI. But I already had most of this written when I posted chapter 1, and I figured if it's done then why wait? 
> 
> This and what will be chapter 3 was originally one chapter, but it got a little long for my tastes. I like to keep my chapters short enough to easily read in a single sitting.
> 
> Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!

Leonard didn’t know where he expected Jim to lead him, but it wasn’t  _ here _ . The pair had taken an Academy shuttle downtown, where Jim, much to Leonard’s dismay, rented a goddamn motorcycle, and had taken them a short distance north of the city. If he had to guess, Leonard would have assumed it was something to the tune of 25 kilometers, but he didn’t have the same innate sense of distance and direction that Jim did. After the short drive, Jim pulled the bike off to the side of the road in front of a gate that distinctly proclaimed no trespassers were allowed.

“Kid, where did you take us? I seem to recall telling you only half an hour ago that I wasn’t going to break into anything with you,” Leonard said.

“Would you relax?” Jim requested as he punched a series of numbers into the gate, “I know a guy who gave me the code.”

“Do I want to know?” Leonard asked and Jim just shrugged, which he took for a no. But he  _ did _ have the code, however he may have gotten it, so Leonard sighed and followed his friend through the now open gates. The two of them walked towards a sprawling complex of old, decrepit, and dark buildings, dry dirt crunching under their feet. Wanting to avoid stepping on a rattlesnake or some sort of spiky plant, Leonard turned the flashlight on his comms unit on, only to be chided by Jim for “ruining the mood”. But with the light of his flashlight combined with the nearly full moon, Leonard was able to better make out the complex of buildings they were headed to, and when he did his stomach fell. 

“Jim, tell me you didn’t take me to that old abandoned prison north of the city,” Leonard sighed, unable to stop himself from putting two and two together. He had never been here, of course, because he wasn’t some sort of idiot with a death wish, but apparently he was because he was here now. Damn.

“Kinda having trouble reconciling that with your standing request that I not lie to you, Bones,” Jim proclaimed casually, skipping up a few crumbling concrete stairs to approach a door to one of the closest buildings in the complex.

“Jim…” Leonard sighed.

“Yeah?” Jim prompted, turning around to face his friend and drawing his thick brows together, “you said no breaking and entering and no unstable buildings. This place is totally safe and largely legal.”

“Largely,” Leonard scoffed but Jim ignored him,

“Plus, it’s supposedly super haunted.”

“Ha! Now that’s some bullshit if I’ve ever heard it. You don’t seriously think there’s such thing as ghosts, do you?”

“Are you saying you don’t? You’re from the rural south, man. It’s haunted as shit down there. The shit you guys have puts whatever lives in the corn fields in Iowa to shame.”

“Nothing lives in Iowa corn fields but corn and mosquitoes, Jim. And why do you think that even with all the technology we have now nobody has managed to conclusively prove the existence of ghosts? It’s because they ain’t real.”

“You  _ must _ have heard shit down in Georgia.”

“Old legends told to scare children into staying in at night, sure. I’m a man of science, I don’t believe in that nonsense.”

“If you don’t believe in it, that must mean you’re not scared of it, right?”

“Course I’m not scared of  _ ghosts _ , I’m not a child.”

“Well, then you don’t have any reason not to go in,” Jim said, smirking like he had proved some sort of point.

“The supposed haunting of this building is not why I don’t want to be here,” Leonard said. Truthfully, this complex had always made him a bit uneasy, and that feeling was doubled now that he was actually here. He didn’t know what it was, but he tended to trust his gut when it was telling him something was dangerous. He had enough dangerous things in his life without needing to add to that needlessly. The only thing that could get him in this building was if someone in there was injured and needed medical attention. Well, that or Jim’s eyes, shining bright in the light of his flashlight, apparently. The kid had himself wrapped around Leonard’s finger in a way that he couldn’t quite explain, and all he had to do was sigh and Jim knew that he had won and opened the door and led them both inside.

“This place has a really cool history too,” Jim said as they stepped inside and he finally switched on his flashlight, “Lots of messed up shit happened here. It was a prison for around 200 years. Former home to California’s most violent criminals and all the fucked up shit that they used to do to criminals back then. And they put people in jail for the dumbest things too.”

“When did you become a damn expert on the old Californian penal system?” Leonard asked, not really expecting an answer. Jim had a tendency to fall into what he called “research holes” when he got bored - the single most productive and least dangerous of the Bored Jim Kirk Activities - and as a result knew a ton of information on seemingly random topics. But this time, Leonard nearly did get a clear answer from his friend,

“Come on, you really think I didn’t do my research before coming here? Places like this are so much cooler when you know the history.”

Leonard figured that, if prompted, Jim could tell him “fun” facts about all abandoned buildings of note in the Bay Area, but he didn’t press the issue. Instead, he focused on not tripping on any of the garbage strewn across the floor of this place. There was everything from the innocuous, like an old bag of chips doubtlessly left here by another ‘urban explorer” to the dangerous, like 10 centimeter long rusted nails sticking pointy side up. Jim had been right on his assessment of the building’s stability, or at least so it seemed, but that didn’t mean there was no danger in being here. Leonard  _ really _ didn’t want this night to end with him pulling a rusty nail out of Jim’s foot. Again.

“Watch where you’re putting your feet,” Leonard warned Jim, and his friend merely hummed in affirmation while leading them through yet another door, scanning the resulting room with his flashlight, and then whistling low. Leonard followed him and realized that they had just stepped into a cell block. He had seen enough old movies to recognize the bar-clad cells when he saw them. Jim ran his hand along some of the bars as they walked through the tall and narrow space. A lot of the cell doors were open, and Jim seemed to pick one at random and peered inside,

“Damn, somehow this is even smaller than I thought. And grosser.”

“I could’ve predicted the grosser for ya, kid,” Leonard rolled his eyes, curiosity getting the best of him as he looked into the cell as well. But Jim was right, the space was tight and smelly and filled with the type of things that tend to accumulate in buildings that have been abandoned for 200 year. The floor was covered in rat droppings, stray scraps of metal, and something that suspiciously resembled hair. The walls almost appeared to be leaking, and Leonard would bet that if he touched it - which he was not going to - that it would feel somewhat slimy. Jim was still focused on looking over every sparse centimeter of this place, and eventually shined his light into the bowl of what appeared to be a toilet, took a whiff, then immediately took a step back and coughed.

“Jesus  _ Christ _ . Bones, com’ere, you’ve gotta smell this.”

“I’m not that much of an idiot, Jim,” Leonard shook his head with a laugh. He could imagine what the contents of the bowl smelled like up close, as that was no doubt strongly contributing to the overall smell of the place. It wasn’t an experience he was interested in amplifying. 

“What kinda diseases do you think I’d get if I drank that?” Jim asked, flashlight beam still on the mysterious contents of the old toilet bowl. If he had to guess, Leonard would have named several things that were likely combining in that bowl to result in this particular smell, and none of them were good. He rolled his eyes at his friend,

“I think it’d be easier to tell you what diseases you  _ wouldn’t _ get from drinking that shit.”

“I’ll pay you a hundred credits if you…” Jim started and before he could even find out what his friend was willing to pay him to do, Leonard shook his head,

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re no fun,” Jim declared, turning on his heel to head out of the cell, “Come on, let’s go find a cell that smells less like a Klingon dive bar.”

Finding an area of this building that didn’t smell positively toxic was proving to be rather impossible. Jim led Leonard up a rickety ladder to another floor of cells, occasionally poking his head into different cells to see if there was anything interesting to be found. In Leonard’s opinion there never really was, but Jim seemed to find some of the graffiti adorning the walls to be strangely fascinating, even though it was mostly just initials, dates, and crude depictions of male anatomy. The only thing Leonard found interesting was a rather detailed drawing of a penis that was actually signed and dated for whatever reason. If the date was accurate, this particular phallic portrait was over 200 years old. Sometimes it was easy to forget that humans had always been humans, for better and for worse.

In one cell, seemingly chosen at random, Jim pulled a small knife from his jacket pocket and etched “JTK & LHM 2257.54”. Leonard informed Jim that he did not want his initials carved on a prison wall, but it was too late and Jim didn’t really seem to care anyways. As the pair wandered through the prison, Jim spouted off seemingly random facts about the history of this place. Leonard listened, decently interested but unable to shake the sense of danger and unease that being here gave him.

One building seemed to fade into another, everything in this complex looked just about the same, especially with the lights off. Eventually, Jim managed to find a cell that only slightly smelled like death and old bodily fluids, and he sat down on the metal surface that had likely been a bed at one point. Jim requested Leonard sit down as well, and, not in the mood to fight Jim’s whims, he sat down on the wide bench with his friend. To his surprise, the younger man was silent, and the pair sat in deeply uncomfortable silence for just about the longest minute of his life. It wasn’t that silence with Jim was uncomfortable, it never really was, it was the silence in general that was uncomfortable. Jim had been talking most of the time since they got here, as was his wont, and on the few occasions when Jim was silent there was always their footfalls to create sound. But now there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was eerie. Leonard knew what the human brain did in situations like this, how it could create sound where there was none in the absence of all auditory stimulation. He was about to clear his throat and say something, like maybe suggest that they don’t need to sit in an old prison cell in complete silence for no reason, when Jim abruptly started calling out names. It always took Leonard a moment to decide if he actually cared enough to know the reason behind a particular Jim Kirk behavior, but this time he decided that he did. This was just strange. There was nobody else here, as far as he knew. There certainly hadn’t been any other vehicles out front, and they were a bit far from anything to walk, especially in the dead of night in February.

“Jim, who the devil are you talking to?”

“The ghosts, Bones, obviously,” Jim rolled his eyes, as if Leonard should have somehow been able to know that given the absolutely no context that had been provided to him.

“And these ghosts told you their names?”

“No, ghosts don’t talk.”

“Oh, right. How silly of me. How did you get the names then?”

“Well,” Jim started, his tone suggesting he had just been waiting for Leonard to ask, “The way I see it, the ones who become ghosts are probably the ones who died with a lot of anger, right, or something to prove. And there were a lot of real messed up people held in here, and a ton of false convictions as well. Detective work back then was pretty whack. Anyways, I figure some of the more famous criminals may be willing to have a chat.”

“So that’s who you’re calling out to? Just famous criminals?” Leonard asked, not bothering to keep the amusement out of his voice. This whole situation was just so incredibly Jim that it was honestly funny.

“Yeah. Seemed like a good place to start.”

“What, like Jack the Ripper or something?”

“No, not like Jack the Ripper,” Jim laughed, a happy sound that was fully in odds with the environment the two found themselves in. It seemed that happiness shouldn’t even be able to exist in a place like this, but Jim Kirk was like the sun itself, bringing a bit of brightness to even the darkest places. “No, Jack was never caught, and he killed in London. I’m talking people who were actually here. Better yet people who died here, but the records aren’t the greatest. Ya know, Charles Manson, The Nightstalker, Rodney Alcala, Joe Naso, that one guy who they thought was the Fallout Killer back in the mid 21st century before they realized he was innocent of those but guilty of  _ different _ murders…”

“I don’t know a single one of those men and would rather not be introduced to them tonight. Not that it  _ matters _ , because,” Leonard started, but Jim cut him off with a laugh,

“Because ghosts aren’t real. I got it. You don’t really think that, do you?”

“We’ve been over this. The only thing in this godforsaken place other than us is just an untold number of snakes and rats and cockroaches. Not the spirits of dead serial killers from the 20th century. And if they were hanging around, I don’t suppose you could hear them while you were hollering their names like that.”

Jim said nothing, but mimed zipping his lips with a wry smile. Leonard sighed, and they returned to that terrible silence until he was no longer able to hold his tongue,

“Didn’t they realize the Fallout Killer was actually several different people, and the authorities at the time were just suffering from the chaos that was the 2050s, 21st century idiocy, and whatever the opposite of linkage blindness is?”

“Ha!” Jim barked out a laugh, loud and victorious, “I knew you knew more about this stuff than you let on!”

“Oh, shut your mouth before I lock you in this damn cell,” Leonard threatened but as usual it didn’t seem to have any affect on Jim other than amusement, because his friend just grinned and said,

“Oh, empty threats, empty promises.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For curious readers, the prison Jim and Bones are wandering around is a by then abandoned San Quentin. All information presented on the prison is true, except for the stuff I made up (stuff that happens in the future) and the layout of the inside because let's be real, none of us actually know that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 is here! 
> 
> Fair warning, this one does get a bit heavy. There's nothing graphic or anything but this one ain't as lighthearted and fun as the last one.

After what felt like a damn eternity sitting in that old cell as Jim alternated between demanding silence and calling out to the names of long dead serial killers and wrongfully accused, Jim was suddenly on his feet again, proclaiming that there was so much prison to explore and so little time. Occasionally, Jim would stop at another cell and call out some more names for a few minutes. Leonard was starting to feel like he was on a ghost hunt, despite Jim’s initial bill of this as “urban exploration”. Maybe he had thought Leonard would never have agreed to go ghost hunting with him. He probably would have been correct in that assumption.

Leonard hated it here. Hated this place with every fiber of his entire being. It wasn’t just the smell, or the risk of stepping on some ancient rusty nail, or the cockroaches he sometimes saw scurrying away in the light. This place just made him feel horrible, and there was this little part in the back of his mind that kept screaming “dangerous!” as loud as it could. Logically, he knew there wasn’t much dangerous about the place. He knew it was structurally sound, apparently they kept it up so they could do ghost tours every October. Go figure. But the building wasn’t going to come down on him, and as long as he watched his step he wasn’t going to pierce his shoes with anything. And the roaches, while gross, were harmless. But the feeling was still there, the one he would sometimes get while wandering in the woods behind his grandparents’ house before he learned not to go back there. It was unease, pure and simple, and if leaving here didn’t mean abandoning Jim on his own, Leonard would have been out of here the second he walked in.

He tried, to varying degrees of success, to put the feelings of unease out of his mind. It was almost working until Jim turned the corner into yet another long dark hallway. Leonard followed because of course he did, but then something stopped him dead in his tracks. It felt like he had run into a wall, despite there being nothing in front of him but empty air and a handful of flies. He was suddenly overcome by an awful feeling, something dark and terrifying that gripped his soul. Everything in him was screaming for him to get the hell out of there  _ now _ . But despite his instincts, he couldn’t just leave Jim so he was left with his feet rooted to the ground as his loyalty to the best friend he had ever had battled a sensation he had only felt this strong once in his life. Finally, Jim noticed his friend wasn’t on his tail and turned around,

“Bones, what are you doing? Come on.”

“Don’t go down there,” Leonard ordered, his voice coming through far shakier than he had intended. Normally he would have been embarrassed by it but now? His pride was the furthest thing from his mind.

Jim turned around and walked back to where Leonard was standing, feet still in the same place he had stopped. Leonard didn’t know much about this place, but he did know he felt deeply uncomfortable having Jim’s back to whatever was at the end of that hallway. He kept his gaze affixed slightly above Jim’s head, hoping to ward off whatever may try to take advantage of his friend’s vulnerable position.

“Why not?” Jim asked as he approached Leonard, “What’s wrong? Bones? You sorta look like you did back last semester when you had to take basic flight.”

“It’s dangerous,” Leonard managed, “Down there, it’s dangerous.”

“Uh, why?” Jim asked, drawing his thick brows together, “What makes this dark and creepy hallway somehow different than any of the other dark and creepy hallways we’ve been down the past few hours. You don’t even believe in ghosts, I don’t see what you’re so freaked out about.”

“It just seems like a bad idea, is all,” Leonard said, resolve weakening in the face of his friend’s comments. Jim was right, Leonard decidedly did not believe in ghosts. He didn’t know what had him all worked up, but it was almost definitely all in his head, and not worth making a big deal out of. He tried to cover up his hesitancy to go down the hallway with something a bit more rational, but the best he could come up with was, “God only knows what’s hanging out this deep in the complex. You might get bitten by a rabid raccoon or something.”

“A raccoon, really Bones?” Jim asked, his voice dripping with skepticism, “That’s what all this is about, some damn hypothetical rabid raccoon. Do you know how many cases of rabies there even are anymore? Oh wait, of course you do, you were the one who told me. 8 confirmed cases among literally every living thing on earth in the past 10 years.”

“Oh, good, you do listen to me.”

“Course I listen, Bones. Just don’t usually use the knowledge you’ve so graciously provided me with in any meaningful way.”

“You can say that again,” Leonard mumbled. Really, just talking with Jim was relaxing him a little, allowing air back into his lungs again.

“Look, man, I don’t know what this is about, but if you’re not gonna tell me then there’s really no reason not to go check out this hallway, right?” Jim asked and Leonard sighed, resigning himself to his fate. He was just being irrational anyways. Whatever was down there was fine. It was probably just some more bugs and trash and shit. Nothing he hadn’t been practically ankle deep in for hours. 

“Fine,” he agreed, and if he stayed a little closer to Jim’s side as they walked down the hall, neither of them said anything.

Execution chambers. Jim had led them into the goddamn execution chambers. From the look of shock on his friend’s face when they passed the old, barely legible signs on the doors for the rooms where executions had been carried out, Jim hadn’t known what laid at the end of this hallway anymore than Leonard had. The sight of these rooms was enough to make his stomach turn, and almost enough to make him forget the terrible feeling of dread that was still overcoming him. He had known, of course, about the state-sanctioned executions that were conducted hundreds of years ago, but he never thought he would come face to face with a place where it was done. Places like this always made him feel sick in a way that had nothing to do with the feeling of danger and unease he sometimes got. This was hardly the first nor the most serious site of something horrible that he had visited, but this was the first one he just stumbled on under the guise of a weird night out and not as part of an educational opportunity to teach students about the mistakes of the past. He never liked being in places like this, but this felt worse because the context was all wrong.

The door to one of the rooms was open and Jim peered inside, but didn’t cross the threshold. 

“I don’t think we should go in there,” Leonard advised, “A place of suffering like this isn’t a place to be acting a fool trying to find ghosts.”

“This whole building is a place of suffering,” Jim mumbled under his breath and took a step into the room, “But I’ll be quiet. Just wanna pay my respects is all.”

Leonard nodded, glad that Jim seemed to be taking this as seriously as it was, and followed his friend into the room. Jim sat down on the floor, right in the middle of the room, and Leonard followed suit. Neither man said a word, and Jim breathed deeply and shut his eyes. Leonard was not about to close his eyes in here, not with the feeling of unease and dread that had somehow only doubled when he stepped into this room. Every centimeter of his skin was crawling, and it felt like there was something standing behind him sucking all the happiness out of his soul. The urge to leave was so powerful that it took all of his self-restraint to stay seated on the ground with his friend. Jim wouldn’t leave until he was good and ready, and there wasn’t a single thing in the entire goddamn universe that could make him leave Jim here alone. 

For a while, he was able to convince himself that this feeling was nothing. Nothing was going to happen, it was all just in his head anyways. That is, until the door to the room they were sitting in abruptly slammed shut.

“Uh, Bones…” Jim said, suddenly opening his eyes and fixing them on the now closed door. 

“Probably just the wind,” Leonard managed, but his voice was coming out funny so he wasn’t sure how it actually sounded to Jim. His friend seemed to get it, though.

“‘Course it is,” Jim rolled his eyes, “Hey, is anyone in here with us?”

There was no response, however Leonard felt like something reached into his chest and was squeezing his heart. It wasn’t a panic attack, he had been through enough to know what those felt like, this was something different, something he had only felt once before.

“We just want to talk,” Jim continued, oblivious to how his friend was feeling, “Can you communicate with us? For the record, we both think what was done to you was horrible.”

And then there was breath, hot in Leonard’s ear, and a threat, unspoken but somehow clear as daylight.

“Jim, we need to leave now,” Leonard said, trying his best to manage a stern, no arguments tone. He wasn’t sure if it worked, but it did get Jim’s attention,

“Bones, seriously, what has gotten into you? And you better not say raccoons again.”

“Listen, Jim, I am asking you to trust me. Just trust me. We need to get the hell out of here right now and we need to not come back. I can’t explain, but…”

“Okay,” Jim shrugged, still casual as ever as he stood up, “Let’s go. Do we need to leave the whole prison or…”

“Yes,” he said simply, falling into step right behind his friend, trying to put his own body between Jim and anything that may try to attack him from behind. Jim whistled a light, happy tune as he led them away from whatever the hell was in that room and, after an eternal but blessed minute, pushed open a door Leonard hadn’t noticed that thankfully took them outside.

He inhaled the cool night air, then exhaled deeply, as though he was trying to cleanse himself from whatever he had felt in there. Maybe he was, in a way. It was amazing how just a step outside could clear so much of that terrible feeling from him. It was still with him to an extent, but the feeling of full on terror, dread, and danger had been left in that godforsaken building. And he meant that literally. If there was a god, they had turned their backs on this place ages ago.

Jim continued whistling, but neither man spoke until they reached where Jim had left the bike he had rented.

“You okay?” Jim asked, pulling on his helmet and handing the other to Leonard. He took it and nodded, because he was now that they were out of there. And he would be even better once they put some kilometers between themselves and this awful place.

“So, ya wanna go to that late night bakery that you claim serves the only passable cobbler in the north?” Jim offered as he mounted the bike. Trust Jim Kirk to know exactly what Leonard needed right now. He appreciated the check in, but beyond that really did not want to talk about the events of the past half hour. What he wanted was a smooth move on and a distraction, and Jim seemed to just know that. Which is why, despite his stomach still being in at least a dozen knots, he agreed to the cobbler. It was, at the very least, a distraction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI this was by far the heaviest this fic is going to get. After the next chapter, which deals directly with the events of this one, the rest of the fic will be much more like the previous chapter. So if that's what you came here for never fear because that is coming back (tbh that's what I came here to write but sometimes things write themselves a bit, ya know?)
> 
> Shoutout to the AO3 spellcheck for catching that I had spelled "raccoon" wrong like 4 times without my Google Doc telling me, even though the AO3 spellcheck also thinks "centimeter" isn't a word.


	4. Chapter 4

A few days after their trip to San Quentin, Jim returned home from the evening session of the hand-to-hand class he was student teaching with a big bag of dumplings from Leonard’s favorite place in the city. Leonard was suspicious when Jim took a couple bottles of beer out of the fridge and laid them out along with the dumplings on the coffee table. He felt like he was being buttered up for something with decent beer and his favorite dumplings from a restaurant too far away to go regularly. But if Jim wasn’t going to just ask for whatever favor he was clearly angling for, Leonard was just going to enjoy the dumplings and the company.

Jim was uncharacteristically quiet as they ate, seemingly content to listen to his friend complain about the apparent ineptitude of the latest batch of interns over at the Academy clinic and rave once again about the new coffee place he had discovered near campus a couple weeks back. Jim sometimes made fun of Leonard for his caffeine addiction, but not tonight. 

Jim let Leonard fill the verbal space at least until Leonard picked up the last dumpling with his chopsticks. Jim took a pull of his beer, cleared his throat, and asked,

“So, we gonna talk about Saturday?”

Shit. Leonard had honestly been hoping that Jim had decided to let it go. Sure, that was hardly like Jim Kirk, but neither of them had mentioned the events of the past weekend since Leonard had gotten on the back of Jim’s motorcycle and they had left that godforsaken place.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Leonard replied gruffly, “But thanks anyways for the dumplings. Now if you don’t mind, some of us actually have to study.”

“I study!” Jim protested, screwing up his features at the accusation before abruptly smoothing them again, “Nevermind. Stop trying to distract me from this. Seriously, Bones, what happened to you in there? You looked scared shitless. And you can claim to not be brave all you want but we both know that’s a bunch of bullshit. Like I said, haven’t seen you like that since you took basic flight.”

“Leave it alone, Jim,” Leonard requested, and then before his friend could pull anything out of him he cleared the empty dumpling containers into the reprocessor and retreated back to his room to study for an upcoming exam.

The only problem was that even though their room was still technically graduate housing, the double that he accepted to room with Jim only had the one bedroom, which meant his bedroom was Jim’s as well. While he knew from last year’s experiences that Jim had no qualms about wandering into Leonard’s bedroom at random even when Jim did not have an equal share of said room, there was now even less stopping Jim from following him, which is exactly what happened. Jim flopped down on his bed flat on his back and looked at his friend but said nothing.

Leonard tried to study, he really truly did. But he could just feel Jim’s eyes boring into the back of his head. Jim was trying to wait him out, he knew this trick, hell he had practically invented this trick. He had done this to Jim more times than he could possibly count, and while there was that old saying “turnabout is fair game”, Leonard found he didn’t enjoy being on the receiving end of this particular interrogation strategy. And what he hated most of all is that, despite knowing what Jim was doing, it was still working.

Finally, he slammed his PADD down on his desk, sighed, and shook his head,

“This will sound crazy. I’m serious, if someone told me this then I would give them a referral to psych for a consultation.”

“I don’t really know many psychologists,” Jim said and even though he was still sitting with his back to his friend, Leonard could practically hear the shrug in Jim’s voice.

“Sometimes...sometimes I get these  _ feelings _ ,” Leonard started. He couldn’t believe he was really going to do this. He had never told anyone about this, not even Jocelyn. But there was something about Jim, something about the fact that even though he was judging himself he knew that Jim wouldn’t think differently of him for what he was about to say. He took a deep breath and continued, “Always have, long as I can remember. Can’t really explain it. Sometimes, some  _ places _ rather, make me feel...uneasy. There’s just something that comes over me, real dark and uneasy and uncomfortable. And it’s not just that I’m somewhere creepy, it’s not just that I’m afraid. It doesn’t always come where I expect it. Always felt it in the gardens behind Jocelyn’s grandparent’s house, for example. Never found out why.”

“And you felt it down near those execution rooms on Saturday,” Jim said after a pause, seemingly to determine if Leonard was really done talking. What Jim was saying wasn’t a question, really, but Leonard answered anyways,

“Felt it in the whole building, really. That hallway, though...only felt it like that once before.”

“What happened?” Jim asked, his tone quieter and softer than anything Leonard had ever heard out of his boisterous friend before.

“I was 10, my grandparents had a ton of land that backed up to a little grove of trees, not quite the woods but it felt like it at the time. I never felt good there, but I went in with a few of my cousins one day. They were all older than me, I was trying to show off, so when they dared me to stay in there alone despite my bad feeling and all the weird noises that had them turning tail, I did. Stayed till it got too much, thought I saw some weird shit in there. As I was running out of the grove, I...tripped on something. Hit my head on a rock.”

“You ‘...tripped’?”

“Felt like I was pushed,” Leonard mumbled, because dammit if this wasn’t all completely irrational. He didn’t believe in any of this shit, but it had felt so real. It always did.

He hadn’t realized that Jim had gotten up, in fact he didn’t realize it until his friend was perching cross legged on top of his desk. He finally chanced a look at Jim’s face, and to his relief but not necessarily to his surprise he found no mocking or judgment there. There was sympathy and what was clearly held back excitement, which was fine by Leonard, but there was no judgement or disbelief. 

“Bones,” Jim finally said, seeming to realize his friend wasn’t going to say anything else, “Don’t get me wrong that  _ sucks _ , but it’s also kind of cool. Like I’m sure that was terrifying as a child, but man you’ve got like ESP or whatever and that’s just awesome!”

And suddenly Leonard was laughing. He wasn’t sure why, nothing Jim had said was even really funny, but the laughter was just bursting from him in a way that he couldn’t contain.

“What the hell?” Jim asked, but he was laughing too.

Leonard shook his head, took a deep breath, and tried to pull himself back together. There was just something so freeing in revealing a secret he had kept so close to his chest for so long and being faced with nothing but Jim’s particular brand of sympathy blended with fascination. He felt almost giddy having gotten that out between them, and for some reason the only way that could escape his person was through laughter.

Jim rolled his eyes and nudged Leonard in the arm with his foot,

“You are so damn weird, man.”

“This from you,” Leonard countered, “Now get off my desk, Jim.”

Jim relented, but just rolled onto Leonard’s bed, which wasn’t a ton better. It did, however, allow Leonard to throw a foot up on his desk and lean back in his chair, a move that earned him a comment from Jim on his terrible posture, which he was more than used to ignoring at this point. Finally, he returned to the topic at hand,

“ESP is a bunch of pseudoscience bullshit.”

“You cannot be serious, Bones! You can sense ghosts, you’re like a human version of a ghost detector, and you claim to not believe they’re real? You were worried about the other shit sounding crazy but this is the only thing that sounds crazy to me.”

“Jim, come on, there is no concrete evidence behind the existence of ghosts. It’s made up, same as those psychics at the fair who tell you you’re going to meet a tall dark stranger.”

“Maybe you will,” Jim grinned and wiggled his eyebrows obnoxiously. Leonard just rolled his eyes. “You know,” Jim continued, “I think it’s actually more scientific to keep my mind open to potential new discoveries, rather than assume we already know everything. Last weekend in the prison, neither of us knew what was down that hallway and it didn’t look any creepier than anything else in that place, but you  _ knew, _ man. And then the door slammed and it got real cold and you were experiencing it all on this whole different level and, seriously, come on Bones. Come on.”

“Come on what?”

“Come on and quit lying to yourself. It doesn’t actually do anything other than make you think you’re crazy, which isn’t exactly healthy.”

“Sorry, wasn’t aware I was talking to the king of healthy coping mechanisms,” Leonard snapped and immediately regretted it, even more so when he saw the split second of hurt behind Jim’s eyes before he was able to cover it. He shook his head, “Sorry, that’s not fair, this whole thing just stresses me the hell out.”

“Whatever,” Jim shrugged, “Out of curiosity, do you ever get those feelings in a positive way, or is it all just the dark stuff?”

“I...don’t really know. Guess I never paid much attention to it. But it’s never made a lick of sense where it happens and where it doesn’t. Like I said, I always got the feeling in my in-laws’ garden but in secondary school we went to a museum of the history of slavery in the American South, and God Jim it was a horrific place but I didn’t feel anything beyond what would be expected at such a site.”

“That makes sense, actually.”

“Does it, now?”

“Yeah! Think about it, what if I killed you right now?”

“Well, I wouldn’t appreciate that for one,” Leonard said, looking up at his friend just to ensure Jim caught his eye roll.

“Yeah, obviously, but you’re a good person, grumpy old man tendencies notwithstanding. And sure you’d probably haunt the shit out of  _ me _ because I killed you, but I don’t think your whole personality would suddenly change and you would become the type of guy who liked torturing people from beyond the grave,” Jim explained, his tone making it sound like it was the most obvious thing in the world and not some random information that was just spilling straight from his brain to his mouth.

“I would like to note that if ghosts are real I will haunt you from beyond the grave regardless of if you kill me or not. Although really you’re more likely to die first, because you don’t seem to give a good goddamn about your own life,” Leonard said, eyeing his friend.

“Quit distracting me,” Jim grinned, “What I’m saying is that I feel like innocent people aren’t going to turn into malicious ghosts. So a place where something terrible happened to a bunch of good people isn’t likely to leave the same kind of energy as a place where a high concentration of terrible people were. Which makes me wonder…”

“Which makes you wonder…” Leonard prompted after Jim’s trailed off silence lasted a bit too long. But Jim never responded, instead he leapt from the bed, grabbed his leather jacket off the floor, and looked back at his friend, blue eyes burning bright,

“Bones, how much do you trust me?”

“That’s a stupid question, kid,” Leonard said, already on his feet because somehow despite everything he was going to follow Jim tonight and then again and again and again until the ends of the galaxy. He would trust Jim with his life, no matter how often he teased his friend that he would never get on board a ship with Jim as the captain for fear of his own life. He wasn’t always quick to trust, but somehow when he wasn’t looking Jim had taken his trust and never looked back. Which is why he didn’t even need to ask Jim where they were going before following his friend out the door. Sure, he  _ did _ ask because he wouldn’t be him and they wouldn’t be them if he wasn’t giving Jim some well earned shit from time to time, but it wasn’t necessary, and when Jim had simply responded with “the library” Leonard found it justification enough to follow his friend into the dark of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a fun fact is that everything I write includes a mention of dumplings for Reasons (the reason being that I love them). This chapter is the dumpling shoutout for this fic.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for not having anything even approaching an update schedule. I work in public health and there's a pandemic. I write when I'm not going insane.
> 
> That said, hope you enjoy chapter 5!

Leonard had been assuming that the library Jim was referring to was the Academy library, but it was not. Jim had led him through the city and to an old library at the center of town. The place was just closing up, but Jim seemed to know the old woman at the front desk who greeted them and allowed them to take as much time as they needed, which confused Leonard a bit until he saw the stacks and stacks of books. Real books, paper books. Places like this were really more museums than libraries at this point, so few people read from paper books anymore, but Jim loved this shit. Spending days surrounded by a stack of old books just for the hell of it was a side of himself that Jim rarely showed, but Leonard had seen it time and time again. Jim had a lot of very specific interests and for some reason paper books were one of them, although he would deny it if Leonard ever mentioned it in public.

Jim led them up a set of stairs to a spacious second floor and shut the door behind them. He then wandered around for a bit, talking brightly about how cool he thought this place was and all the old books they had. Eventually, he seemed to find what he was looking for in a set of two velvet armchairs facing each other with a small table separating them, both sitting right next to a window. Jim shrugged out of his jacket, tossed it on one of the chairs, then for some reason walked over to the nearest book shelf and pulled a few volumes out, only to put them back on the shelf backwards. Leonard arched an eyebrow but said nothing until Jim ordered lights on the entire floor down to 10%, using a building code he somehow knew.

“Jim, what are we doing here?” Leonard asked, trying to keep his tone even. It felt suspiciously like Jim was taking them on another ghost hunt, and after what he had just made himself admit, this all felt a bit like Jim was spitting in his face. But he was trying to give his friend the benefit of the doubt.

“Have a little faith, Bones,” Jim grinned, his eyes sparkling in the low light, “I’m not trying to fuck with you if that’s what you’re worried about. Besides, wouldn’t you know if I brought you somewhere full of nasty ghosts?”

Leonard said nothing in response to that, because even though he still did not like thinking about what his feelings actually implied, Jim was probably right about that. And he felt nothing bad in this building. Sure, the place Jim had chosen for them to sit was quite drafty, but as far as feelings of darkness and discomfort, he had none. Instead, he decided to close the topic altogether,

“How often do you come here that they gave you the damn building codes?”

“A lot,” Jim shrugged, sinking down into his own chair and throwing his feet up on the little table, “About 25% of the time you think I’m out drinking, fucking, and getting into fights I’m actually here.”

“Interesting,” Leonard said simply, because that certainly was a revelation, “And why would you pretend that you’re actually out making trouble when you really just have an all hours pass to a damn library?”

“I’m not pretending shit, I never lied about where I was going, you just assumed.”

Oh. Well this was...news. He wondered how many things he was just assuming about his best friend that weren’t necessarily true. Maybe he was buying into Jim’s front more than he thought he was.

“And the other 75%?” Leonard asked, for a lack of anything better to say.

“A solid 25% I’m down by the beach, and that last 50 I’m actually out drinking, fucking, and getting into fights.  _ Although  _ I haven’t gotten into a fight in almost a year, so it’s actually more the first two lately.”

“Okay first I want you to promise me you’re not swimming alone in the dark.”

“God, Bones, I’m not a complete idiot. I just like the sound of the waves. Besides, the water up here is freezing.”

“Good. Then I would like to remind you of that time in December where I patched you up from what you openly admitted was a bar fight.”

“That doesn’t count!”

“Oh really?”

“Some creepy guys were harassing this poor woman at the bar, I told them to leave her alone, and they punched me. Not my fault.”

“Uh huh,” Leonard nodded, his tone conveying a skepticism he didn’t feel, because he really couldn’t fault Jim on that one. He just liked messing with his friend every once and awhile. Jim more than returned the favor. Speaking of… “You gonna tell me what we’re doing here?”

“Right!” Jim said brightly, as though he had been distracted by the banter and forgotten why they were actually sitting in a dark library on a Wednesday night. “Okay, so, I want you to close your eyes, just kinda sit here for a while, and tell me how you feel.”

Leonard couldn’t help but roll his eyes at that, “What is this, therapy?”

“I’m being serious.”

“And you can’t tell me what this is about because…”

“I really need you to just trust me on this one.”

“Do you need to just cut the bullshit and do a trust fall or something? Is that what this whole evening is about?”

“ _ Bones _ ,” Jim implored and because for some reason he could never bring himself to deny the kid any halfway reasonable request - and a lot of completely unreasonable ones as well - Leonard sighed, leaned back into his chair, and closed his eyes.

“I’m feeling annoyed and confused,” he said after a quick beat of silence.

“Take as long as you need,” Jim said, seemingly stretching out in his own chair as suddenly his long legs were all up in Leonard’s space.

Figuring Jim wasn’t about to let this go anytime soon, Leonard decided he would take the moment for some quiet reflection. He let out a deep breath and pressed his hand against the chill of the window. He wanted to be annoyed at Jim for dragging him here for...whatever purpose this was, but truthfully he was having a hard time being annoyed right now. He felt a sense of peace and almost a calm resignation. 

“If you brought me here to try to detect something creepy, I’m sorry Jim but it’s just not coming,” he said finally.

“And what’s coming instead?” Jim asked, paused for a beat, then let out a light laugh and kicked him in the shin, “Inset obligatory coming joke here.”

“I will not,” Leonard grumbled, “Infant.”

“I don’t think most infants actually know…”

“Shut up.”

“Seriously, though, you get anything?”

“Not in that way. This place is...” Leonard shook his head, trying to gather his thoughts, “It’s calming here. Peaceful. I feel light and rested and weirdly I don’t even feel too annoyed at you for dragging me all the way out here when I have class at 0900 tomorrow.”

“You feel like this any other place?” Jim asked.

“What? Happy? I promise you that despite how it may sometimes appear this is not the first time I’ve been happy.”

“No, Bones, you really don’t think I’ve figured out your whole front by now? No, I mean this exact feeling specifically.”

“I guess sometimes,” Leonard said, after spending a few moments trying to wrack his brain for memories of this exact sense of calm he was experiencing right now, “My old primary school, this one boulder in the middle of campus at Ole Miss…”

“A  _ boulder _ ?” Jim cut him off with a laugh and Leonard kind of wanted to leave because he really couldn’t be properly annoyed with Jim here. Instead he continued,

“Felt it a lot in your old dorm room, too. Didn’t think much of it at the time…”

At that, a broad smile spread across Jim’s face, one that warmed Leonard even in the chill of the air.

“Oh, hell yeah, I always told Gary…nevermind. Say, Bones, you know the history of this place?”

“No, unlike you I don’t know the history of every old building in San Francisco.”

“It actually has a bit of a tragic past.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Back in the 21st century this was some sort of office building…”

“That is tragic,” Leonard deadpanned and Jim rolled his eyes but otherwise carried on, 

“This floor was a daycare for employees’ children…”

“Please don’t tell me this story is about child death,” Leonard cut his friend off again and Jim kicked him lightly and laughed,

“Quit interrupting, you’re turning into me. Anyways, ya know how the 21st century was just a giant shit show? Well, it was during world war 3 so emergency services were a bit slow, so when the ground floor of this building caught fire they knew there wouldn’t be help for a while. Floors above us were able to get out through the stairwells, but by the time anyone knew what was going on the fire had already spread to the second floor. The only way out was through the windows. Someone outside heard the shouts and brought over a ladder, and the daycare workers handed the children out the window to the man on the ladder. They thought they had everyone but then they heard a child crying and an older woman named Sharron volunteered to go find the last kid. She got the kid out of there, but by the time she finally got out herself she had inhaled too much smoke for 21st century medicine to do anything for her. They didn’t lose any of the kids, though, and she was hailed as a hero. This floor is actually named after her now.”

“And let me guess,” Leonard said after a few moments to process, “This is the window all those kids escaped from.”

“Yup!” 

“...and according to you, this Sharron woman is still around?”

“Oh yeah, everyone knows Sharron is still here. She seems to approve of this place being a library now. In fact,” Jim said, suddenly standing up, “If you put the books in the wrong way, she’ll fix them for you.”

Jim then walked over to the nearby shelf where he had earlier flipped several books around. Curious, Leonard got up to look for himself, only to find the books now facing the right way.

“This doesn’t prove anything,” he grumbled, “For all I know you could have fixed these yourself when I had my eyes closed.”

“See, I thought you would say that!” Jim said, his eyes shining like he thought he had just pulled something over on his friend, “Which is why when you closed your eyes I stuck my legs out like I did. So you would know I didn’t get up, because I was touching you the whole time your eyes were closed.”

Dammit, Jim was right, Leonard knew that. Jim had been touching him the whole time, even though he hadn’t thought much of the contact at the time. 

“That doesn’t mean it had to be a ghost, Jim. It could’ve just been the woman from downstairs.”

“Please, you think Kate did this? Bones, she’s 100 years old, far too slow, and her ankles crack when she walks. And she’s the only other person in this building besides us. And you felt Sharron, you did, you can’t deny it.”

“I don’t know what I felt.”

“Ya know, the old saying is right: denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.”

“It was nothing like in the prison last weekend.”

“‘Course it wasn’t! Sharron was a good person who died saving people. She’s not going to be sending the same kind of energy as some sort of 20th century serial killer. And you know what you said about feeling something similar in my old dorm room?”

“Yes, I recall,” Leonard said, and dammit if he didn’t just have this feeling that he wasn’t going to like where this was going.

“Yeah, that room was haunted as hell,” Jim stated with a smile, clearly enjoying this all too much.

“Of course it was,” Leonard grumbled under his breath. 

“It was! You can ask Gary about it, he wouldn’t lie to help me save face. Gary always thought it was some sorta negative presence, but I knew it was good. The thing would wake me up for classes on time when I was going to oversleep, sometimes they would even tidy up. Really, that ghost was the best roommate I ever had, present company included. I don’t know where they came from, but they were there.”

“I find it odd that you never mentioned this before.”

“Well…” Jim trailed off then cleared his throat, “We should probably go. You have that early morning class tomorrow. Or, well, early for you.”

Leonard knew Jim was trying to avoid something, it was probably obvious even for people who didn’t know Jim as well as he did, but he decided to ignore it for now. Jim rarely brought things up he wasn’t ready to discuss in full, so Leonard felt confident his friend would explain further soon. So, with only a comment about how not everyone could successfully function on basically no sleep, he followed Jim out of the library. 

“So,” Leonard started as the pair began to walk back to campus, “You were telling me about why you never mentioned your supposedly haunted dorm room until now.”

“Was I?” Jim asked, “It’s not really a story, I just didn’t know you as well then is all.”

“Ah,” Leonard nodded simply, understanding just what Jim was trying to say. Oddly, this actually made him believe his friend more, because if Jim were just messing with him then he never would have gotten this close to emotional vulnerability. 

“So?” Jim asked, his eyebrows arched as though he were expecting some sort of answer.

“So what, kid?” 

“So do you believe me?”

“I believe you believe it.”

“That’s a cop out.”

“I’d take what I could get at this point, if I were you.”

“What is it, huh, Bones? Why are you so set in this? I’ve never met anyone who’s gone to greater lengths to deny something than you are right now.”

“Feelings can be written off, I base my beliefs on things I can see and hear. Actual evidence. Science. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it…”

Jim nudged his friend in the shoulder and snorted,

“You’re unreal. Ya know what, I’m going to make you believe in ghosts.”

“Good luck with that one,” Leonard said dryly.

“Thank you. San Quentin isn’t the only haunted place in the Bay Area, ya know,” Jim said with a wicked smile and Leonard suddenly stepped in front of him, blocking his path,

“I don’t think so. After what I told you, you’re really going to…”

“Relax, Bones,” Jim said, putting his hands on his friend’s shoulders, “It won’t be like San Quentin. Rule number one: if you say we need to leave then we leave. No judgments, no questions asked.”

“I dunno, Jim,” Leonard shook his head. It wasn’t that he didn’t take Jim at his word, he more than did. He just had no desire to repeat the events of the past weekend, is all. And he really didn’t think he needed to go searching for trouble. That was Jim’s game, not his. His life had enough trouble on its own, thank you very much.

“Why not? As we just saw, you can sense good energy too. Maybe we can meet some friendly ghosts. I think I can get you to believe, Bones. You’re already 80% of the way there, your own head is just getting in your way. I’ll tell you what, if I can’t make you believe in ghosts by the end of term, you get to call all the shots on the post term celebrations. If you want to just stay home, drink a bit of whiskey, read medical journals, and go to bed at 9 like the old man you are, I’ll join you without complaint. But if I  _ can _ make you believe in ghosts we go to whatever stupid bars and parties I want. All weekend. How’s that for a deal?”

“Doesn’t sound like there’s much motivation for me to tell the truth, does it?”

“Oh, I know you too well, Bonesy…”

“Don’t call me that. How many times must I tell you not to call me that?”

“As I was  _ saying _ , the moment you allow yourself to believe, I’ll just  _ know _ . Plus, you’re kind of a shit liar, man.”

Leonard sighed but started walking again, mostly because it was February in San Francisco and the chill of the wind was cutting through his jacket. He otherwise said nothing. He couldn’t believe there was any part of himself that was even considering going along with Jim’s hairbrained scheme, and yet…

“Bones, look, I’ll give it to you straight,” Jim started, walking out in front of Leonard this time. But unlike what Leonard had done just minutes prior, Jim kept walking, completely effortlessly despite walking backwards. Leonard kept an eye out to make sure his friend didn’t run into anything, just in case. In the meantime, he couldn’t resist the joke on the tip of his tongue,

“Jim, you’ve never done anything straight in your life.”

“You know it,” Jim said with a wink and finger guns. Leonard rolled his eyes and Jim’s face suddenly became much more serious, “Look, man, I’d never admit it but trying to squeeze the Academy into three years is kind of kicking my ass.”

“I’ve noticed. In case it’s escaped you, I do live with you. I think I’m the only one on campus who isn’t buying your whole ‘I can carry a perfect 4.0 on an accelerated course load without even studying’ act. I know how hard you work.”

“If you tell anyone I’m trying, I’ll deny it.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Leonard said dryly.

“Knew I could count on you, man,” Jim said with a smile, “But I’m being serious. I’m so busy actually studying, plus I’m trying to get that internship this summer, ya know. And then you’re doing all your xeno certification courses plus I feel like you practically live at SFM or the Academy clinic because for some reason you couldn’t just pick one and then you’re doing that research project…”   


"Yes, I’m aware that I’m busy, if you would be so kind as to get to the point,” Leonard prompted, cutting his friend off.

“I just, I dunno…” Jim trailed off, suddenly looking at the ground, all while still walking backwards with this thin layer of cool and casual he could never quite shrug off. “I just feel like we’ve barely seen each other this term, even though we live together. Because we’ve both been so busy and…”   


"Okay,” Leonard said, surprising himself a little. He must have surprised Jim as well because his friend tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and luckily managed to catch himself before falling on his ass. After a brief exchange in which Leonard convinced Jim to walk forwards again, Jim looked at him, his blue eyes wide and bright. Hopeful.

“You’ll really do it?”

“Yeah, kid, I’ll do it,” Leonard relented. What Jim didn’t really understand, and what Leonard was certainly not going to tell him, was that his rare displays of genuine emotion were much more effective than any of his increasingly rare attempts at manipulation ever could be. Leonard knew the difference between the two like he knew the back of his hand, and dammit if he wasn’t putty in the hands of an open and earnest display of emotion or affection from Jim Kirk. He knew how much it took for Jim to pull back all the layers of casual, cool, and effortless that he constantly surrounded himself with, he knew that Jim saying, even without really saying, that he wanted to do some stupid ghost hunting bet as an excuse to spend more time together, was a huge deal for Jim. And that significance only made it more meaningful for Leonard. He didn’t know if he could say no even if he wanted to. But he found he didn’t really want to. He understood where Jim was coming from, and he wanted to spend time with the kid as well, even if it was ghost hunting, of all things.

“Yes!” Jim exclaimed, pumping his fist in the air then throwing his arm around Leonard’s shoulder, “It’s going to be so much fun, we’ll get to see so much cool stuff, and in the end you’re going to have to spend all weekend at bars and parties with me. Win, win, win.”

Leonard gripped Jim’s shoulder, just hard enough to ensure he had his friend’s attention, and said, “You promised the second I say we need to leave then we do, no questions asked. I intend to hold you to that.”

“I know! A promise is a promise, I won’t fight you on leaving anywhere. I’ll even pinky swear on it.”

“What are we, 6? God, I knew you were a child, but this is a new level.”

“No, it’s not,” Jim said brightly, holding out his pinky to Leonard. With a sigh, and feeling quite like he was back in primary school, he wrapped his pinky around Jim’s. All he could really do was agree,

“No, guess you’re right, it’s not.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was wondering why this one was taking so long for me to write and turns out it's because it's real long. I'm not splitting it because I don't want to and I'm not cutting anything because I'm addicted to writing Jim and Bones banter. 
> 
> Thanks so much for all the kind comments I've received! I appreciate each and every single one of them! <3
> 
> Enjoy chapter 6!

Leonard was honestly hoping that Jim had just forgotten about him agreeing to the whole bet thing they had going now. It had been over two weeks since they last discussed it, and really they were both too busy with midterms to have time to think about some stupid ghost hunting bet anyways. Or, well, Leonard was far too busy. Jim wasn’t any less busy, but he seemed to have endless energy and an endless capacity of attention, so he probably could have easily devoted himself to attempting to prove his friend wrong all while acing each of his exams in the process. But Jim didn’t mention it, so Leonard allowed himself to put it out of his mind. While he knew that it would not have been very in character for Jim to just let this go and forget about it, there was a part of him that held onto hope. And he was able to keep that hope alive until the Saturday evening following his final midterm of the semester.

He and Jim had been having what he thought was a quiet night in. The pair had gone out to a favorite local bar the previous night to celebrate the end of exam season, a night which had ended when Jim kept attempting to nail down his “type” by playing the wingman Leonard never asked for and introducing him to just about every vaguely attractive person in that bar. Jim had gone home with one Leonard’s many rejects, and he himself had gone home both early and alone on account of having suffered through an 0600 exam just that morning and therefore being in no mood to flirt with strangers in bars or watch Jim do the same. But tonight had been shaping up to be a far more relaxing night. Leonard was flipping through articles on the Academy servers, hoping to find some good ones to cite in his research, but wasn’t actually reading any of them and was simply filing the ones he found promising away for later. Jim quietly sat at his own desk, munching on homemade popcorn - with kernels straight from Iowa! Jim had only mentioned that a few dozen times - and presumably studying. Leonard was considering giving up on his attempts to do work and suggesting that the two of them watch a movie or something, but apparently Jim had other ideas because just as he was considering this Jim pushed his chair back from his desk and proclaimed,

“We’re going out.”

Leonard forced himself to look up from his PADD and gave his friend a sideways look,

“We just went out last night.”

“We’re not going drinking, Bones,” Jim said, either oblivious or apathetic to his friend’s hesitation. Leonard would have bet on the latter. Jim pulled on his favorite leather jacket, the one Leonard always thought was not nearly warm enough for the winter weather, and continued, “We’re going to go find ourselves some ghosts.”

“Oh, great. Just what I was hoping to do right after I finished midterms.”

“You finished midterms yesterday, you’ve had enough time to unwind. The bet’s still on, man. You didn’t think I forgot, did you?”

“Not forgot, but I was hoping you’d decided you didn’t care.”

“Does that sound like me?” Jim asked, throwing Leonard’s own jacket at him. He sighed and stood up, figuring this was probably going to happen regardless, so there was little use fighting it too much. There was, of course, use fighting it a little, as that’s just how he and Jim were, but he wasn’t going to expend too much energy on getting out of this. He had agreed to it, after all, no matter how much he had questioned his sanity in the following weeks.

He grumbled in response as he put his jacket and shoes on, and he caught Jim’s eyes flash bright at the realization that he had won. Of course he had won, Leonard felt like Jim always won with him, dammit.

“What sorta godforsaken death trap are you taking us to this time, kid?” he asked, “And you better not tell me this one involves motorcycles.”

“What’s worse, the bikes or the ghosts?” Jim asked curiously, leaning against the door frame as Leonard collected his things.

“With you drivin’, I’ll take the so-called ghosts,” he drawled and his friend rolled his eyes,

“Please, Bones, I’m an ace on a bike.  _ And _ I wear a helmet now. You’re welcome.”

“I’m not thanking you for keeping your own brain from becoming the latest installation of street art.”

“You should be. Saves you the trouble of having to fix me up.”

“If you crack your skull on some stupid bike, I’m saving myself the trouble by letting some intern take a stab at you. And besides, there’s not much I could do for you if you were dead. I’m not a necromancer.”

“Eh, I think you’ve got a few tricks up your sleeves,” Jim shrugged, “Now come on, let’s go find some ghosts. I think you’ll find our destination tonight interesting.”

“You fine walking?” Jim asked as they walked past the checkpoint off Academy grounds and into the city proper, “It’s barely over 5 kilometers and it’s a nice night.”

“Nice night my ass,” Leonard grumbled, pulling his jacket tighter around his body, “You would say that, you goddamn Midwestern agent of chaos. You could get shot out an airlock and your dying words would be ‘oh, if it wasn’t for the windchill it wouldn’t be so bad’.”

“Bones,” Jim started, his tone an impression of seriousness, “There is no wind in space. It’s a vacuum. It’s important to me that you know this.”

“Oh my God, you’re kidding,” Leonard drawled, “Can’t believe I’m a year and a half into Starfleet Academy and nobody told me space is a vacuum. Groundbreaking.”

“Besides,” Jim continued, “You’re one to talk. If you got put on the surface of the sun, your dying words would be ‘well, at least it’s a dry heat’.”

“Don’t pretend I’ve never heard that out of your mouth before you  _ goddamn Midwestern agent of chaos _ .”

“I’m your favorite,” Jim proclaimed cheerily, swinging an arm around Leonard’s shoulders as they walked, “Don’t deny it.”

And, if he was being honest, Leonard really couldn’t, so instead he just grumbled noncommittally, shrugged Jim’s arm off his shoulders, and continued walking towards whatever hell hole Jim was leading them to this time.

“So,” Jim said, kicking gravel on the trail as they walked, “Ya know where we are yet?”

“No, I just know we shouldn’t be here,” Leonard replied and Jim stopped walking and placed a hand on his arm,

“Is this you calling it or….”

“No, this is me telling you we just passed a sign warning us that if we weren’t careful we could be hit by a wave, swept out to sea, and drown.”

“Oh, that. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. Besides, it’s low tide, we should be fine. Hey, uh, Bones?”

“Yeah?”

“If you do need to call it, that doesn’t mean you’ve lost.”

“Okay?”

“Look, I…” Jim raked his fingers through his dirty blond hair, “I just want to make sure you’re comfortable, is all. This is supposed to be fun, ya know. And, well, I trust your instincts. Probably more than you do. So don’t be afraid to speak up.”

“Uh, thanks kid,” Leonard said, surprised by the sudden burst of sincerity. But it seemed to be gone as quickly as it came.

“So, any guesses?” Jim asked, stretching his arms out wide and turning around in a circle as he walked, “Come on, you have to have  _ some _ idea of where we are.”

“Haunted beach,” Leonard guessed.

“Close! Welcome, my friend, to the Sutro Baths,” Jim said brightly, shining his flashlight on a nearby sign proclaiming the name of this place, as well as several paragraphs of what Leonard would guess was probably history.

“Haunted baths? Ya know, all the kids in my dorm freshman year at Ole Miss thought the showers were haunted.”

“Were they?”

“Of course not.”

“You mean of course not because ghosts aren’t real or of course not because you never felt anything there?”

“Both. The plumbing was just real old.”

“The showers in my high school locker room were definitely haunted. If we’re ever in Riverside let’s go check them out.”

“I feel like two grown men wandering around a high school locker room would be creepier than any ghosts supposedly inhabiting the place.”

“True. So, Sutro Baths. Ring any bells? You’ve lived here for a year and a half, it should.”

“Heard of it, don’t know much about it. Isn’t it some sorta ancient ruins on the beach?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say 1960s was ‘ancient’, but it is old,” Jim remarked, hopping off the trail and onto the beach. He swept his flashlight wide in front of him, illuminating some very old and very poorly maintained ruins rising from shallow pools of water, no doubt brought in during high tide. They were close enough to the ocean that Leonard could feel the cool mist in the breeze. It wasn’t the most comfortable sensation. “Watch your step,” Jim warned, approaching a long crumbled wall, “This isn’t the most stable.”

Leonard sighed deeply as he followed his friend towards the ruins, “Thought you said no unstable buildings.”

“This look like a building to you, Bones? Nothing here’s gonna fall on our heads. I just don’t want you twisting your old man ankles. I’m  _ not _ carrying you back to the Academy clinic all the way from here.”

“Gee, thanks. What’s all this anyways? I assume you know the full history for exactly no good reason. Leftover from the war?”

“Nah, not much in San Francisco from that era, not that looks like this. They rebuilt all the meaningful stuff and scraped the rest. Besides, I said 1960s not 2060s. The place was built by some rich guy back in the late 1800s and it was basically a building full of swimming pools and assorted cultural oddities. Honestly the place seemed like it was a lot of fun, they had slides and even a trapeze. In the 19th century! Apparently it wasn’t super profitable and, ya know,  _ capitalism _ , so they had to close and shortly thereafter the whole place burned to the ground. They think maybe it was arson. So, give it to me straight, Bones. Anything here? Good, bad, in between?”

Jim had been walking on one of the crumbled walls as he explained this place to his friend, watching his step a fair bit more than he usually did. Leonard figured Jim knew if he got injured doing this then they wouldn’t be doing it again. As he concluded his explanation, he turned and looked back at Leonard and it was dark here, real dark, not a light at the bottom of these cliffs save for their flashlights, but Leonard just  _ knew _ the look in Jim’s eyes. He wanted to give Jim something, as silly as it may feel, but he didn’t know what to give.

“Well, it’s not like San Quentin,” he said finally.

“Good! So more like the library then?” Jim guessed and Leonard shook his head,

“No, wouldn’t say it’s that either.”

“So...nothing then? This place is a bust?”

“No, I don’t think it’s that either. It’s…”

“It’s what?” Jim asked, because Leonard had trailed off to think and never picked back up again.

“I dunno, Jim. Like I said, you’re the only one I’ve ever even told about this. I’m ain’t used to leaning into it and certainly not talking about it. I don’t know what I’m feeling, and I certainly don’t have the words to articulate it.”

“Try your best,” Jim shrugged, leaning down to swipe his fingers through the water then quickly pulling them back up again and whipping them on his pants. No doubt the water was freezing.

“Cold?” Leonard guessed with a laugh, allowing himself to be distracted from trying to figure out what he was feeling. It was something, certainly, but he couldn’t say what. It was easier, laughing at something ridiculous Jim did.

“Eh,” Jim said, “Not great, but I’ve felt worse. This is supposed to be something to the tune of 12 degrees. I spent a few months in Chicago once, back when I was 20 or so, and did a polar bear plunge in Lake Michigan in January. Now  _ that _ was cold. Barely above freezing. There were chunks of ice floating by the shore.”

“And yet you got in anyways? Jim, water that cold can kill you!”

“It was an organized event! And, ya know, it doesn’t feel quite as bad if you have a few drinks first.”

“Okay, now it’s my turn to make sure  _ you _ know something. You’re aware that being drunk doesn’t actually prevent you for dying of fucking hypothermia, correct?”

“Obviously,” Jim drawled, “I was only in there for like a minute tops, dried off right after. Now you and I are both aware that you’re saying all this to distract yourself. So give it to me straight, Bones: what kind of energy are you getting from here?”

Leonard took a moment to think. He stood atop a more stable section of crumbled old wall and closed his eyes, trying to nail down what he was specifically feeling here. It was a new experience, leaning into this. He had always turned away from it, never paying anything other than the darkest feelings any kind of mind. He still wasn’t sure how Jim had talked him into this. There were all these feelings to parse through, and he needed to separate his own from...whatever it was that was making him feel the rest. He tossed away some obvious ones; the easy familiarity and warmth of being with Jim, annoyance at the fact that Starfleet couldn’t be headquartered somewhere warmer, and anxiety about how he had done on his midterms. And what he was left with was...a lot. It was just a lot.

“I don’t think I’m getting just one thing,” he finally concluded, opening his eyes to see Jim all lit up by the flashlight and looking at him intently.

“Ohhhh, can you further elaborate on that?”

“I’ll try. I…” Leonard paused, thought for a moment, then continued, “Kid, you ever have chicken and waffles?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Well, for one, we’re definitely going to have to change that. But it’s...there’s a lot going on there, ya know? Lotsa different flavors. The waffle, the fried chicken, the syrup. My mama topped it off with red pepper flakes even. It’s inherently contradictory, and it’s hard to nail down just one flavor. This, here, is like that.”

“...I would love to complain about your nonsensical metaphor, but that works, actually. Does ‘chaotic’ feel right to you?”

“That seems to imply a certain kind of disorder or mischief. And that may be there but...I guess messy is probably the best single word. The blend of everything just feels messy.”

“Damn, Bones,” Jim said after a brief silence between the two, “You’re really fucking good at this, you know that?”

“Thank you?” 

“I’m serious. Every place we’ve gone you’ve completely nailed what’s supposedly there, all without knowing anything about it yourself. You’re like some kinda medium.”

“Do  _ not _ insult me like that.”

“Fine, fine, I forgot you think that’s all bullshit. And sure, most of it probably is, but you, Bones?” Jim shook his head, “Damn.”

“So what’s supposed to be here, anyways?” Leonard asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

“Whole lotta stuff. People who got swept out to sea and drown, shipwreck victims, some demons summoned by Satanists in the 20th century, a kid who hit his head on a slide and died, the spectors of people in Victorian bathing suits, a variety of entities brought back by Sutro on the artifacts that he had lying around, which were probably stolen from their original culture so there’s a whole other type of energy there. It really is the chicken and waffles of haunted old ruins on beaches.”

Leonard said nothing, taking that all in. He hated when he was right about things like this, he really did. If Jim had said only one of those things, it would’ve been a hell of a lot better in his book, because he could just  _ see _ how a combination of what Jim had said could lead to him feeling like he was. But, dammit, there wasn’t such thing as ghosts or residual energy or whatever the hell Jim was always going on about lately. It was a bunch of unscientific bullshit, and if Leonard’s feelings happened to coincide with Jim’s explanation sometimes, then that wasn’t necessarily  _ proof _ . 

“Hey, is anyone here?” Jim abruptly shouted, pulling Leonard’s attention out of his own thoughts and back to his friend, who was walking casually among the ruins and shouting into the empty air.

“What’re you expecting them to do, holler back?” Leonard asked, but his friend ignored him,

“We just want to communicate with you. See, my friend here doesn’t think you’re really here, so maybe you could show us a sign. Move something, or touch us, or…”

“Or push Jim there into the water,” Leonard mumbled. Jim shot him a look but continued, now gathering small stones from outside the ruins and stacking them into something resembling a carin on one of the old walls.

“Hey, if anyone is down here with us, just knock over those rocks, okay?”

Both Jim and Leonard stared in silence at the rocks for what in Leonard’s opinion amounted to far too long to be looking at a pile of rocks sitting on a cold beach. Finally Jim sighed,

“Feeling shy? That’s fine. Come on, Bones, let’s go check out the tunnel.”

“The tunnel?” Leonard asked skeptically, “As in the crumbling, over 300 year old tunnel waiting to cave in at any moment?”

“Nah, more like just a hole in a rock. It’s all perfectly safe. This place is maintained by edop nad.”

“I’m sorry, by  _ whom _ ?”

“Earth Department of Preservation, North American Division,” Jim explained, hopping off the wall and making his way towards the cliffs, “EDoP-NAD. Keeps all the old historically important stuff standing, makes sure we don’t lose our cultural heritage, all that good stuff.”

“Yeah, I know them, just didn’t recognize the acronym is all. Damn alphabet soup, get enough of that at the Academy,” Leonard grumbled, but nonetheless followed his friend across the beach. In response, Jim just laughed.

Leonard tried and failed to suppress a shiver as he followed Jim into a dark tunnel in the side of the cliff. Just the single step in here had made things a lot clearer, but he found himself missing the messy combination of feelings he had been getting back at the ruins. Jim was walking in front of him, but it was like his friend somehow sensed his discomfort nearly the moment he did because Jim turned around and looked at his friend, brows furrowing together,

“You okay, Bones?”

“Yeah, this is just a bit darker is all.”

“Oh. We need to get out of here?” Jim asked and in that moment Leonard knew that Jim was planning on being true to his word, and that no matter the answer he was given he was prepared to accept it. It was calming, knowing he wouldn’t have to fight Jim if and when it all got too much.

“We’re fine right now. It’s like how San Quentin was at first; dark, but not explicitly threatening.”

“Okay. Well, keep me updated. In the meantime, let’s kill the lights and see if whatever’s here is in the mood to communicate.”

Leonard happened to think that was a terrible idea, but he kept that to himself. Jim reclined against the tunnel wall, bending a knee and putting his foot flat up against the wall. It was such a “look I’m Jim Kirk, effortlessly cool and universally desirable” pose that Leonard had to laugh despite the general feeling of darkness around him. But then Jim switched off his light and reached over to do the same to Leonard’s, and the darkness wasn’t just a feeling anymore.

The tunnel felt impossibly dark for something so short. He knew that he was only a few steps away from being back on the beach, but he felt like he may as well be in a cave for all the light the ends of the tunnel were providing.

“Jim?” he asked, mostly because he could only just make out the outline of his friend’s form, and there was a part of him that needed to make sure the other man was still okay. But when Jim just told him to be quiet so they could hear the ghosts, Leonard found himself unable to just leave it at that. “Ya know, it dawns on me that you’re actually a real shitty ghost hunter.”

“On the contrary, we are a perfect two for two. And given your instincts tonight I suspect we’re going to be three for three. I’m actually a  _ great _ ghost hunter,” Jim stated, unable to keep himself from rising to the bait despite his claims of desire for silence.

“I was under the impression that all those ghost hunter hacks in the holo programs used special tricorder settings to detect ‘ghosts’. And you didn’t even bring yours,” Leonard pointed out. Honestly that surprised him a bit. He thought Jim would be willing to use any tools available to him, and writing a program to detect “ghosts” would be a real piece of cake for his friend.

“No, I’ve got something better,” Jim said, reaching out and squeezing him on the shoulder, “You’re way better than any ghost detection program I could put into my tricorder. The only thing I would need one of those for was to find places with ghosts, and you seem to be able to do that pretty well. And would you really be convinced if my tricorder showed fluctuations in electromagnetic readings or temperature or any of that?”

“Course not. Bunch a bullshit, the lot of it.”

“I rest my case,” Jim said simply then turned his attention back to the “ghosts” in the tunnel with them, “We’re just going to be quiet now, if any of you want to show yourselves or speak to us please know we’re more than willing to listen.”

What followed was the single heaviest silence he had ever experienced with Jim, but it was silence nonetheless. In fact, it almost was  _ too _ quiet. He found he could barely hear the waves, despite the proximity to the ocean. That realization made him shiver, but it didn’t necessarily mean anything. He felt on edge, uneasy, like every muscle in his body was tensed and ready to run at a moment’s notice. Eventually the tension was killing him and he had to do something to break it so he quietly leaned in close to Jim and whispered “boo” right in his friend’s ear. 

Jim probably jumped a full meter in the air, and thankfully Leonard was familiar enough with his friend’s hair trigger reflexes by now that he knew to back up fast enough to avoid getting shoulder checked in the face as Jim practically jumped out of his skin.

“Jesus, Bones, you nearly gave me a heart attack!” Jim protested, ever so slightly breathless. “What the hell, man?”

“Please, like you wouldn’t have done the same thing. Like you  _ haven’t _ done the same thing. The opportunity was right there,” Leonard said, slapping his friend on the back good naturedly and flipping on his light again. Just that little source of light made this place feel ever so slightly less horrible. He then slung his arm around Jim’s shoulders and said, “Come on, kid, let’s stop wasting our time in here. If there’s something here it ain’t gonna talk to us.”

“Wait,” Jim said, ducking out from under Leonard’s arms and pulling something out of his pocket. That something happened to be a candle, as well as an old fashioned lighter. The candle was real small, and looked a bit silly poking out of the ground where Jim stuck it. He flicked the lighter, igniting the candle, and then stared at it without saying a thing.

“Okay, Jim, what are you doing?” Leonard asked finally, “Should I be concerned that you’re conducting a ritual sacrifice and I’m the victim?”

“Nah, I think those work best with virgins and you may not get much now but you  _ were _ married once so…”

“Be nice,” he grumbled, and picked up a handful of sand to throw at his friend.

“Hey!” Jim exclaimed as the falling handful of sand extinguished his candle, “That was my only candle! And shit, now it’s all wet, why was that sand half water…”

“You just accused me of being a 30 year old virgin, you do not have the higher ground here.”

“I didn’t, though! I very clearly admitted you likely had sex with Jocelyn at least once.”

“Jim, I have a child.”

“Only takes once! And besides, you can’t take issue with me saying you don’t get some much…”

“I can, actually. What defines ‘much’? Your standard? Cause I hardly think you’re average.”

“Oh, Bones, I assure you every part of me is above ‘average’,” Jim said with a grin and a wink. Leonard was pretty sure he rolled his eyes all the way back into his head,

“Okay, moving on from this lovely topic, what was with the candle anyways?”

Jim was as easily distracted as ever, it turns out, “There’s a legend that if you light a candle and put it at the end of the tunnel the ghost of an old woman will throw it into the ocean. But seeing as how you just ruined my only candle, seems like that experiment is bust for the day. Come on, let’s go check on the rock pile I made. Maybe we’ll get something out of this night after all.”

“Oh, Bones, look!” Jim exclaimed as they reached the ruins again. He closed the remaining distance in several long quick strides. “The rocks! It knocked down the rocks! And, oh, look at how it left them!”

Leonard wasn’t about to run like Jim was, but he hopped up onto the short ruined wall as well. Sure enough, Jim was right. The five stones he had piled on top of each other were stacked no longer, and were now sitting on the wall, spaced remarkably evenly. But Leonard hadn’t spent his entire life denying the existence of ghosts just to freak out over a few rocks. 

“Jim, have you considered that maybe someone just came down here while we were in that damn tunnel and moved them? And by someone I mean a human person...or, well, any kinda person really.”

“Come on? Did you hear anyone come down here? Do you see anyone around here?”

“I dunno, we were in there for a while, someone easily could’ve come and gone by now. And that tunnel was strange, couldn’t hear much of anything in there,” he said, unintentionally walking right into a comeback from Jim,

“And you don’t think that’s odd, how quiet it was in there? Almost...supernaturally quiet?”

“Oh, come on Jim,” Leonard rolled his eyes, “Let’s just go home. I’m still beat from midterms, and you really should be sleeping more than five hours a night while you can.”

“Don’t need more!” Jim countered cheerily, jumping from one section of crumbled wall to another and over the freezing cold water in between. Leonard’s heart briefly stopped until it became obvious that his friend wasn’t going to fall. “I’ve got your number, you know,” Jim continued as he walked far too casually along the crumbled walls, “You’re afraid that by admitting you actually believe in ghosts you’ll open yourself up to more stuff that scares you. Am I right?”

If he was being honest, Leonard didn’t know. He had never really examined his reasons for not believing in ghosts before, despite the feelings he sometimes got. Rather than attempt to discover his own motivations on a dark beach while being pelted with freezing mist blowing off the ocean, he called out to his friend,

“Come on, Jim. It’s fucking freezing and we ain’t gonna find anything here to convince me.”

“Fine,” Jim agreed, “Hey, all the ghosts of the Sutro Baths, now’s your last chance to show yourself! If you want to convince my friend here, all you need to do is... _ shit _ !”

And suddenly Leonard was running back to the ruins because one moment his friend was walking on the low remnant of a crumbled wall, and the next he was suddenly face down in the cold ocean water that surrounded him. Leonard didn’t even focus on keeping his balance as he ran along the wall, desperate to make sure his friend got out of the water quickly. Fortunately the water here was very shallow, and seperate from the rest of the ocean when the tide was low like it was, so by the time he reached Jim he was already getting up, appearing to be uninjured at first glance. 

Leonard held his hand down and Jim took it and as he was helped up he nodded appreciatively,

“Damn, Bones, you’re fast when you want to be.”

“You okay?” Leonard asked simply.

“Right as rain,” Jim nodded so Leonard grabbed him by the wrist and began pulling him away from the ruins. They weren’t going to risk that happening again. When they were finally on more secure dry ground Leonard gave Jim another once over and sighed,

“Christ, Jim, you’re going to send me to an early grave.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Jim grumbled then gave a full body shiver, “I do rescind my previous statements about the relative temperature of the water, though. I feel like I just took an Andorian ice bath.”

“Is that a thing? Nevermind. Come on, take off your shirt,” Leonard demanded. He knew that keeping a person warm after they had just been in water that cold was of the upmost importance to avoid hypothermia or other undesirable things. As for Jim, he grinned,

“Wow, Bones, I didn’t know you felt that way. And, look, it’s flattering and all but I think for now…”

“Shut your trap, kid,” Leonard snapped, “You shouldn’t go walking around in soaking wet and freezing cold clothes, especially not in this weather. You’ll wear my jacket home. And speaking of, dry off best you can with my t-shirt.”

He pulled off his jacket and his shirt, throwing the latter at his dripping wet friend. Jim just stared at him for a moment, but then did as instructed and took off his own jacket and shirt and toweled off his hair and chest with Leonard’s. 

“What’re you going to do, walk all the way back to the Academy shirtless?” Jim asked as he attempted to dry off the best he could given their limited resources here. 

“I’ll be having that back when you’re done, and we ain’t walking. You already have the constitution of a Victorian child with tuberculosis, I don’t fancy your chances of avoiding hypothermia walking 5 kilometers soaked to the bone in this weather. I’m calling us a transport,” Leonard declared, pulling his comms out of his pocket, and glaring at the unit when it refused to work for him. He grumbled to himself for a moment before giving up and holding his hand out to Jim,

“Give me your comms, mine’s shot for some reason.”

As it turns out, he didn’t have any better luck with Jim’s unit. 

“Shitty things,” he grumbled, “never work when you need ‘em.”

He was about to suggest that Jim take a look at them, since the kid had a bit of a magic touch with technology. Jim seemed to sense that, though, as he shook his head,

“Let’s try them again once we’re back up at the street. And if not we’ll just walk to the Academy shuttle, there’s a stop not far from here.”

Loathe as he was to admit it, Leonard knew that was probably their best option at that point. So he put his now damp t-shirt back on, Jim pulled his jacket across his chest, and they made their way back up the hill and to the street, where their comms started working perfectly again. Go figure.

Jim made a brief attempt at bringing up how odd it was that their comms suddenly went out on the beach but worked as soon as they left, but Leonard snapped at him so intensely that the younger man was largely silent for the transport back to the Academy. Leonard was interested in one thing and one thing only, and that was making sure Jim got warm and dry before his little swim started having any health impacts. He was hardly in the mood to talk about  _ ghosts _ right now, and wouldn’t be until he knew Jim was going to be safe. Jim seemed to get that, and didn’t fight him on the matter.

Once they arrived back at their dorm, Jim was bouncing on the balls of his feet, very obviously trying to keep from shivering. Leonard pulled his medical tricorder out of the medkit he kept in their room just for times like these, scanned Jim and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that Jim’s body temperature was still within the bounds of normal, especially given that the other man tended to run cool. Given that, Leonard sent Jim off with instructions to take a warm shower, and that he could even use Leonard’s water credits if he felt so inclined. Leonard was under the impression that the Academy making them use water credits when they were still on the ground so they would “be prepared for life on a starship” was absurd, but he would have given his to Jim without question. Even when the other man hadn’t just fallen in freezing cold water.

While Jim showered, Leonard changed out of his own damp shirt, pulled on his thickest sweater to offset the chill that had set into his bones, and set to work making some hot lemon tea for himself and his friend. When Jim finally finished his shower, he made his way into the sitting area of their little dorm wearing lounge pants and a novelty t-shirt he had gotten last First Contact Day. His skin was slightly flushed from the hot shower, and his dirty blonde hair was still wet and sticking up in about a hundred different directions. Leonard felt a surge of affection for his best friend, scanned the man one more time just to be sure, then offered him the tea.

“I’m fine, Bones, seriously,” Jim protested, not reaching for the mug.

“Just take the damn tea, Jim,” Leonard insisted and Jim laughed lightly but did as he was told. 

“Ya know, you sorta look like a grisled lighthouse keeper from like 1890. That sweater is truly something.”

“Oh, hush,” Leonard grumbled, sinking into their couch with his tea. Jim joined him, crossed an ankle over his knee, and sighed,

“I was always going to be okay, you are aware of that right? Even if my body temperature  _ had _ gotten too low, we’re right near the best medical facilities in the Federation and hypothermia is highly treatable. I know you know that.”   


"I know,” Leonard admitted and shook his head, “Kid, you’re gonna give me a stress ulcer.”

“You’re gonna give yourself a stress ulcer,” Jim countered, “You cannot always blame your extreme mother hen tendencies on me. So, you ready to talk about what happened back there?”

“What’s there to talk about? You fell into the water ‘cause you were actin’ a fool.”

“Oh, come on Bones! You literally said one of the ways the ghosts could prove themselves was by pushing me into the water and not half an hour later I’m soaked.”

“So you were pushed?” Leonard asked, raising his eyebrows. He wanted to be respectful of this topic, as Jim had believed him without the slightest hint of judgment when he had told his story a few weeks back. But he was relieved when Jim shook his head,

“No, I wouldn’t say  _ pushed _ . It was like one minute I was walking and the next I was falling face first into the water.”

“That’s called losing your balance, Jim, and it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been running and skipping all over that damn wall to begin with.”

“But I wasn’t! I was walking like normal when I fell, I wasn’t jumping around or anything. I swear I didn’t feel like I tripped, but I didn’t really feel like I was pushed either. It was real weird, I don’t know what happened.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Look, I ain’t gonna tell you that you don’t know what you experienced.”

“But…”

“But I’m still not buying that it was a ghost. And don’t you even start with theories about EM radiation and why our comms weren’t working. There are a million different explanations for that and most of them don’t include ghosts.”

“Fine,” Jim sighed exaggeratedly, “I can see we’re not getting anywhere with this tonight. So tell me, Bones, were you serious with what you said back at the beach?”

“Which part?” Leonard asked, trying to go over what he had said to his friend at the beach that may have been confusing.

“Are you really tired? ‘Cause I wanna watch a movie. I’ll let you pick.”

“I wouldn’t mind a movie, but I can’t promise to stay awake the whole time. You can pick, I don’t care what we watch.”

“Okay,” Jim agreed, blue eyes shining brightly. He started looking through a list of holo films for the two of them to watch, and abruptly said, “Your accent gets way stronger when you’re worried, man. It’s real charming. If only we could find a way to replicate your stress at a bar, find you someone to take home.”

“Ya know, I don’t think I’m going to find someone to date at some cadet bar, especially given that the crowds there are often 10 years younger than me, but I appreciate the offer.”

“You say you appreciate it, but somehow I feel like you don’t.”

“What gave that away? Seriously, I don’t have time to date right now. I don’t know how you do.”

“Well,” Jim smiled, reclining back into the couch, “It’s not exactly  _ dating _ .”

“Oh, shut your mouth. I wish I had left you in that supposedly haunted puddle you fell into,” Leonard rolled his eyes and Jim laughed and elbowed him in the ribs,

“You’re not allowed to call it a puddle when you nearly gave yourself a heart attack when I fell in. And it’s not like I couldn’t have gotten up on my own. Now be quiet, we’re going to watch Star Wars. The original version.”

“You’re kidding. Jim, the graphics on that shit must be absolutely piss poor.”

“‘Must be’? You’ve never seen the originals?”

“I saw the early 22nd century remakes, and the ones they made about 10 years back, but no I have never seen some stupid movie about magic war in space from the 1900s.”

“Oh, well sit back and enjoy my friend! I assure you that all the remakes pale in comparison to the original. And you better not fall asleep during this. I will wake you up,” Jim promised but when Leonard fell asleep with his head on his friend’s shoulder only half an hour into the movie, Jim didn’t wake him, and he woke up the next morning still on the couch but with his head on a pillow and covered by his favorite blanket. For as much as he was loath to show it publicly, Jim had a massive heart and Leonard considered himself lucky to have a friend like Jim, despite the stress ulcer he was doubtlessly going to get because of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Sutro Baths are a real place in San Francisco that's supposedly haunted! I tried my best to stay true to the history and lore of the place. That being said, if you're like actually from San Francisco and/or familiar with the place, I'm sorry for any of the details I may have gotten wrong! You can just pretend a lot of things have changed in over 200 years.
> 
> Just wanted to let you guys know there's going to be another 2 chapters of this, plus an epilogue. 
> 
> (By the way, my mood this chapter was "these dumbasses are in love but also waaayyyy too oblivious to realize that")
> 
> Come drop in at my Tumblr, if you feel so inclined: https://tochaoticallygo.tumblr.com/


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me dear readers, for I have sinned. My ADHD brain got briefly distracted by another McKirk WIP (or 3), but I'm back with chapter 7. There be ghosts, minor injuries, 4 am vulnerability, and the inability to distinguish between romantic and platonic love here. Enjoy!

Leonard and Jim had run into what Jim was simultaneously referring to as a “dry spell” and a “string of bad luck.” Leonard would argue that the fact that the past three ghost hunting outings had been wholly unsuccessful was actually the best case scenario. Old City Hall had been a total bust, the Golden Gate Bridge had been far too busy to properly discern anything even at 0200, and an old Spanish mission had left him feeling a sense of dread but hadn’t produced anything sufficient enough to convince even Jim. So he had spent his past month running around the Bay Area with his best friend, learning interesting facts about local history, and not even having to remind himself that there was no such thing as ghosts. It was actually all that he could wish for out of this little adventure of theirs. But Jim, obviously, had other ideas. 

The kid was absolutely itching for a win, and Leonard  _ knew _ how stuff like this could consume his friend, so he hadn’t been surprised when Jim had spent all his free time for days leading up to the weekend trying to find the perfect spot. And he probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find the younger man bouncing on the balls of his feet in the lobby of SFM after he finished a shift.

“Jim, what are you doing here?” Leonard asked as he crossed the lobby towards his very excited friend. 

“Bones, tonight’s the night! We’re going to break our dry spell if it kills us,” Jim proclaimed. Leonard blushed slightly upon seeing a nurse he knew giving the pair of them a queer look,

“That’s not...he didn’t mean...we’re not…”

“Our personal life isn’t her business,” Jim grinned, swinging an arm around his shoulders. Clearly the kid was playing into this, and Leonard really wished he wouldn’t. He shrugged off Jim’s arm and rolled his eyes,

“We don’t have a ‘personal life’, you absolute menace. Do we really have to go out now? It’s not even dark yet and I just got off a crazy shift. It’s a full moon, ya know.”   


“So you believe that the full moon causes the emergency departments to get all clogged up but don’t believe in ghosts? Yes, I can see how that makes sense.”

“Hey, I said I believe there’s a correlation, I didn’t say nothing about causation. And the correlation’s been well documented. Regardless, I’m beat…”

“Okay, can we just skip this part for once?” Jim cut him off, “You say you don’t want to come, I say it’ll be fun, you make a big show of grumbling about it but decide to come anyways because you were always going to. Your arguments have been noted, now go on and get changed. It's a bit of a drive and I’ve got a study group at 1000 tomorrow.”

“Wow, is that responsibility I hear? You sure you’re Jim Kirk?” Leonard teased and his friend grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around,

“Go change! I know you keep some civvies in your locker, get dressed and meet me out front. I rented a bike. And don’t you even think of trying to slip out the back door, I know where you live, Bones.”

“Oh, bikes and ghosts at the same time, must be my lucky day,” he grumbled but dammit, Jim was right. He hated when Jim was right. He was going to go with his friend regardless, so he sighed and headed back to the locker room to get changed.

Their destination for the night was nearly two hours away, due east out into the rural nothingness of eastern California. Jim drove for a while, then stopped at this dive bar that apparently had really good sandwiches and sure the sandwiches were good but Jim had forgotten he had had what must have been a very awkward hookup with the bartender there so they didn’t linger. 

Their destination ended up being a large, fenced in building in the middle of nowhere. Ditching the bike on the side of the road, Jim led the pair to a gate that opened if Jim kicked it just right. He explained that they weren’t technically trespassing because nobody really owned this place anymore, and the fence was just there to attempt to dissuade local kids from running around in the building and on the grounds, which weren’t the safest for kids who may not be watching where they were going. Leonard felt like he had been just on the right side of trespassing a lot these past couple months, and he found he was getting used to it, although he didn’t know if he liked that he was.

He was about to say this to Jim, but when he walked through the gate and opened his mouth to speak it felt like his lungs filled with ice.

“Oh, this one’s gonna be bad,” Leonard murmured, mostly to himself.

“Already?” Jim asked.

“Yeah, if it gets worse in the building, which I assume it will, I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to handle this, Jim.”

“Okay, well let’s give it a shot and if it gets too much let me know and we’ll get out of here. Sound okay?”

“Suppose that works for me. Tell me, what is this place anyways?” Leonard asked as he followed his friend to the large imposing building, illuminated in the moonlight, that lay in front of them.

“Old hospital,” Jim said casually and Leonard’s stomach twisted but he said nothing. Jim turned to look at his friend and asked, “What? You love old medical shit.”

“That may be, but some of what they did in hospitals hundreds of years ago is offensive to the very idea of medicine.”

“I mean sure, don’t get me wrong the idea of being stitched up like an old piece of clothing makes me cringe and all but weren’t they just doing the best with what they had? Won’t people look back in several centuries and think that medicine  _ now _ is inhumane?”

“That ain’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how deeply intertwined medicine was with prejudices of the time, how treating some subsets of the population worse than you’d treat a rat was just commonplace and accepted. The story of medicine had all these deep ties to profit and prejudice. I’m not judging old timey doctors for not having regens or medical tricorders, I’m judging them for forced sterilization, human experimentation, dismissing the problems of anyone who didn’t look like them, and having the audacity to get rich off people’s pain.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Bones, I hear you, but this place is from the early 22nd century. Hadn’t things gotten better by then?”

“While relieved that you didn’t take me here to try to meet the ‘ghosts’ of doctors who sullied the name of medicine as a profession, that doesn’t change the fact that this place makes me feel like shit. What exactly happened to this place?”

“Oh, that’s the crazy thing!” Jim said excitedly, his tone completely at odds with the atmosphere of this place, “Nobody knows! Well, they know why it’s not a hospital anymore, but it’s  _ super _ boring. About 20 years ago they decided they were due for an upgrade to the facilities and the people in this area now live a bit further west than they used to, so they just decided to rebuild elsewhere and scrap this building. But nobody wanted the land, so they just left the building here. It’s supposed to be super haunted but nobody exactly knows why! It’s probably more tied to the land than the building in this case, and god only knows what ‘it’ is. Maybe we can find out.”

“Oh, I can’t wait,” Leonard mumbled.

Jim pushed a door open with his shoulder and Leonard followed suit.

“Bones?” Jim inquired, looking over his shoulder at his friend as they walked into the dark depths of the hospital. “How’re you doing?”

“This is weird. It’s not any worse now that we’re in the building than when we were on the grounds,” Leonard said. When they had gone to San Quentin, the dark feeling that he had intensified significantly when they were actually in the building itself, but now it hadn’t gotten any better or worse. It was odd, but he also wasn’t sure if he had enough experience with this to actually call it unusual.

“Yeah, that would make sense if the spirits and energy are more tied to the land than the building. You said this one is darker, right?” Jim asked and Leonard nodded as he exhaled deeply,

“Oh, it’s dark alright. Come on, you must have some theories as to what happened here.”

“Sure, but a lot of them don’t work given what you’ve told me. Just run of the mill hospital deaths don’t explain the dark energy nor the presence on the grounds. There are theories about some things that happened during the third world war, but a place where innocent civilians died wouldn’t be making you feel like this. You good to walk around? Maybe we can figure it out,” Jim said, heading towards a stairwell in what must have been the lobby. Leonard wasn’t really sure if he was good walking around, but he followed his friend anyways, trying to trust that he would know when this situation turned the corner from dark to dangerous.

“It’s old,” Leonard said abruptly as they began to walk down a second floor hallway.

“This is easily the newest place we’ve been, Bones,” Jim corrected him. 

“I ain’t talkin’ about the building,” he said, and then stopped suddenly at the realization of what he had just said. Jim stopped too and stared at his friend with wide eyes,

“You mean...seriously? You can get that? Since when? Are you  _ communicating _ with it?”

“That’s nothing here to communicate with,” Leonard said gruffly and Jim rolled his eyes so hard it looked like it hurt,

“You have got to be kidding me. Don’t go second guessing yourself now, you were communicating with whatever’s here. That’s huge! How did that work, anyways? Did you hear something I didn’t?”

“No, it’s not words, it was just a sudden feeling. Same as I got in San Quentin. Just my mind playin’ tricks on me is all.”

“I don’t believe that for a second and I don’t think you do either. You’re just afraid of what’ll happen if you open yourself up to it…”   


“If I ‘open myself up to it’, as you say, it certainly won’t be here of all the godforsaken places in this world.”

“Suppose that’s fair,” Jim conceded, then shone his flashlight down the two prongs of a fork in the hallway before eventually deciding to keep going straight. But Leonard felt a pull in the other direction, deep within his belly, so he turned the corner and headed into the opposite hallway as the one Jim had just gone down. It took Jim a moment to realize his friend wasn’t on his heels, and he ran to catch up with the other man.

“Okay, guess we’ll go this way,” Jim agreed, at least until Leonard mumbled,

“It wants to meet us.”

At that, Jim stepped in front of his friend’s path and gripped Leonard hard on the arm,

“Did you just say it wants to meet us? Look, Bones, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to meet it too but maybe we shouldn’t be skipping right to the good part, ya know?”

Leonard looked at Jim, blinked a few times, and then suddenly his mind was more clear. He hadn’t even realized that it had been slightly fuzzy before. Jim had this sort of weird expression on his face, and at that Leonard realized what he had just said and a chill ran through him,

“Actually, on second thought, let’s not go down this damn hallway.”

“Yeah, that sounds more like the Bones I know,” Jim said, the same strange expression blending with a smile as they turned to walk back to the junction in the hallways. Leonard was finding it difficult to pick his feet up as he followed his friend out of the hallway. He was keeping up with Jim just fine, but every step felt like he was trudging through quicksand. And that dark feeling was still there. It wasn’t necessarily worse, but it was wearing on him. 

“You okay?” Jim asked as they continued walking and Leonard nodded despite all that was going on inside him. There was that feeling again, that strange pull back into that hallway, but then there was also Jim’s hand, firm and solid and real on his wrist. The sensation was grounding, and was somehow enough to make Leonard realize that a dark presence that desperately wanted him to go somewhere meant he should absolutely be going in the opposite direction as quickly as his legs could carry him. As soon as he had that thought, there was a crash somewhere in the hallway behind him, and he felt like he was being submerged in ice water. 

“Holy shit!” Jim exclaimed, “I swear it just got…”

“We’re getting the fuck out of here,” Leonard cut him off, because suddenly it was of the upmost importance that they weren’t anywhere on this property any longer than they had to be. He didn’t know what was down that hallway or on this land, but he knew that if he stuck around to find out it would not end well for either of them.

Jim nodded, holding true to his promise that when Leonard called it then he wouldn’t argue or ask questions. He even let his friend set the pace, and when Leonard started running Jim followed without hesitation. Giving in to his instinct to protect the younger man, Leonard let Jim lead the way down the stairs that they had only ascended maybe 10 minutes ago. He was running, unable to feel or think anything other than the intense need to leave, at least not until there was a sudden crash and before he knew it he was already on the ground. The grand staircase in the lobby that they had used was a bit showy, with each step held up by cables attached to the ceiling. With a chill, Leonard realized that the cables holding up the step he had been on at the time had snapped, and he had fallen through with the step right down to the ground. Only out of pure luck was he still okay. He hadn’t even been two meters off the ground at the time of the fall. But for some reason when he made a move to stand up, his body wouldn’t respond. He didn’t fully realize what was happening, though, until he saw Jim run up to him. His friend stopped in his tracks, blue eyes wide, and Leonard pushed himself up to sit, looked down at his legs, and groaned. Shit, not again.

His left leg was sitting limp, and the angle at his knee wasn’t quite right. Fuck, this was just the time for this.

“Oh my God! Bones, your leg!” Jim exclaimed but truthfully Leonard barely felt it because that overwhelming sensation that he needed to leave right the hell now hadn’t gone away.

“Help me up, we need to  _ leave _ Jim,” he demanded, hoping his tone left no room for argument as he held his hands up to his friend.

“It’ll be faster if I carry you,” Jim offered.

“I don’t think so, my right leg works just fine.”

“Now isn’t the time for you to get personal space issues.”

“The last thing I need is you dislocating my damn knee even further knocking it against your body as you run. Now help me up before this situation gets even worse,” Leonard said and Jim finally relented and pulled him up to stand on his right leg. And then, feeling not unlike he was running a three legged race, the pair continued their exit of the premises, Leonard leaning heavily into Jim’s side as they...well, it couldn’t really be labeled as running anymore, more quick and awkward walking.

Jim tried to put him down as they left the building, but Leonard insisted that they get off the property entirely, which meant the two of them were limping around all the way back to Jim’s bike.

“Shit,” Jim cursed as he put Leonard down next to the bike, “Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

Leonard inhaled through gritted teeth. This was starting to hurt, dammit. It seemed the adrenaline was starting to wear off, and if this were like the past two times he dislocated this knee it would be getting worse before it got better. “You wouldn’t by chance have a knife, would you?”

“What for?” Jim asked but he didn’t wait for an answer to fish a pocket knife out of his leather jacket and hold it out to his friend. Jim looked frazzled as hell, and in any other situation Leonard may have found it amusing but he had bigger things to worry about right now than whatever the hell was going on in the mind of one Jim Kirk.

“I’ve gotta take a look at this,” he said, reaching down to begin to cut his pant leg just above the knee. 

“Your hands are shaking,” Jim observed, grasping Leonard’s wrist with his own hand, “Let me do it, you’re going to stab yourself at this rate.”

“Some surgeon I am, can’t even cut through denim,” Leonard mumbled and Jim rolled his eyes,

“Pretty sure you’re not expected to be able to operate on yourself.”

Jim carefully cut through Leonard’s pants, slowly removed his shoe, slid his pant leg off, and recoiled.

Jim pulled a hand through his hair, shook his head, chanced another look at his friend’s knee, then pulled his communicator out of his pocket,

“Okay, that’s it, I’m calling emergency medical.”

This time it was Leonard’s turn to catch Jim’s wrist,

“I think the hell not. It’s just a dislocated knee, I’ve done this twice before, it hardly warrants a damn med-evac. You can drive me to the hospital yourself, this ain’t life threatening.”

“Are you going into shock or something? Should I be concerned? You really want me to drive you on a bike all the way back to SFM with your leg looking like that?”

“Kid, you’re starting to sound like me.”

“Okay, so let’s go at it from that angle. What would you do if it were me lying on the ground with a blown out knee right now?” Jim challenged. Leonard figured his friend was probably trying to get him to admit that he’d call emergency medical if the situation was reversed, but thinking about what he would do if he wasn’t the one hurt was actually helpful, because there was really no reason why they still couldn’t do that.

“Well, I’d set your knee and then...how far away is the new hospital they replaced this one with?”

“Maybe 25 minutes if I drive fast, but I can’t set your knee! You aren’t seriously asking me to do that, are you?” Jim asked, and Leonard finally put his finger on that strange tone in Jim’s voice. It was panic, which was an odd emotion on his friend but also fully unwarranted. It was almost flattering if it wasn’t so damn annoying.

“Jim, if they didn’t teach field relocations in that first aid course you took last semester then I’m going to have to have some words with your instructor. What are you going to do if you’re leading an away mission and this happens to someone on your team and you can’t get an emergency beam up? There’s a reason they want command track cadets to take that course.”

“Doing it on a dummy and doing it on your best friend are two different things!” Jim exclaimed, blue eyes still wild in the light of the flashlight, “I can’t believe you’re seriously suggesting this, Bones. They have emergency medical services for a reason.”

“Yeah, and that reason is medical emergencies,” Leonard countered, “We don’t need to be taking up their time when they have true emergencies to attend to. Look, kid, I’ll walk you through it and it doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough to get me on the back of that bike of yours. Come on, Jim, the last thing I want tonight is to get on a damn shuttle.”

Jim’s bright blue eyes locked on Leonard’s deep hazel, searching for something that Leonard didn’t fully understand. Neither of them said a word until finally Jim broke the eye contact and said,

“Fine, I’ll do it. But I don’t trust my memories of my first aid class enough to do this on my own.”

“Oh, I’m sure you and your nearly photographic memory are really struggling,” Leonard rolled his eyes, “Look, I know it’s scary, but you’ll do just fine and I ain’t gonna be mad if you mess up. I trust you, I know you can do this.”

Jim gulped and nodded so Leonard started going through the process with his friend, making sure the other man’s hands were in the right place. He sat up to make sure he could see what Jim was doing and held onto Jim’s side to make sure he didn’t fall over if he started slipping out of consciousness.

Hands in place, Jim pulled just like he had been instructed, but Leonard could tell he was holding back. Leonard gritted his teeth and gripped Jim’s side so hard he was worried he was going to break the other man’s ribs, and he felt his knee slide but not enough.

“Come on, kid,” Leonard said, surprised by the breathless quality of his own voice, “Put your back into it. What’s the point of you staying in such great shape if you can’t even…”

Just then, right while Leonard was talking, Jim pulled again, harder this time, and Leonard’s vision blurred around the edges but he felt a slide and a pop and when he looked down his leg looked a lot more like it was supposed to.

“Good job Jim,” he breathed and gave Jim another friendly squeeze on the side before pulling his hand back.

Jim nodded, eyes still somewhat frantic, betraying an emotion he was obviously trying to suppress. He stood up then held his hands down to his friend.

“Hospital, now.”

It wasn’t a question and it was the right thing to do regardless so Leonard allowed himself to be helped up and once they were able to find a position for him on the bike that didn’t make his knee hurt like a bitch - it may have been mostly in place now but a 90 degree bend was not happening for him - they were off, Leonard’s arms wrapped tightly around Jim’s waist as they left that awful building behind them.

“Bones. Hey, hey Bones. Wake up, man.”

Leonard opened his eyes slowly, taking a moment to remember where he was and how he got there. Jim was standing next to his bed, a strange look in his bright blue eyes. Oh, so Jim had stayed then. When they had arrived at the emergency department and the doctors had told him what he already knew - that he was going to need a few hours of regen for all the tendons and ligaments he had messed up when his knee slid out of place - he had told Jim to go home and he would just catch a transport back to San Francisco in the morning. After all, Leonard was going to be at the hospital well into the night, it was a two hour drive back to the Academy, and Jim had a study group in the morning. Jim had laughed at the very idea and settled into the chair at the side of Leonard’s bed. 

The combination of the mild painkiller hypo he had been given, the late hour, and the massive adrenaline crash had knocked him out real good. He blinked a few times. He was still tired, dammit.

“Come on, Bones, let’s get out of here. Doctor said your regen treatment is done” Jim said, reaching a hand down to pull his friend into a sitting position, “She said you’re good to go, and just to be careful with it the next week. So come on, you can sleep back at the dorm. I can call a transport if…”

“I’m fine, Jim,” Leonard said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and hopping down. Good as new.

Jim nodded, threw his jacket at him, and then headed for the door. Leonard followed, grateful for the first time that Jim had a bit of a fascination with motorcycles. Jim was still acting strangely and probably wouldn’t be good for conversation right about now. At least on the bike there wouldn’t be pressure to try to talk. Leonard was comfortable with silences, but sometimes they freaked Jim out and he didn’t typically care for what Jim Kirk in a bad mood tried to fill silences with.

By the time the pair arrived back in San Francisco and returned the bike Jim had rented it was so late it was bordering on early. The Academy shuttle didn’t run this late, and by some sort of unspoken agreement they decided not to find a civilian transport and just walk back to the Academy grounds. It was only a couple kilometers anyways. 

Jim hadn’t said a goddamn word since they left the hospital, and he didn’t speak for the first few minutes of their walk either. And when he finally did it was to ask in a rather poor attempt at a casual tone,

“It hurt at all?”

“Just a touch stiff, but it’s fine” Leonard replied and Jim hummed in response but otherwise said nothing, contenting himself with silence for a few more minutes as the two men walked with their hands shoved in the pockets of their respective jackets.

“Look, Bones, I fucked up,” Jim blurted out abruptly, “You were trusting me to make sure the places we went were safe and I let you down and you got hurt because of it. I feel like shit. I’m really sorry. I understand if you’re mad…”   


“Do I look mad to you, Jim?” Leonard asked, somewhat shocked by the suddenness of all this. Was Jim really blaming himself for this? Jesus Christ.

“Maybe you should be.”

“I’m  _ fine _ . I’ve got an unstable knee and took a bad landing, it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll be back to kicking your ass at intramural basketball in a week.”

Jim didn’t rise to the bait, and instead shook his head,

“You took a bad landing because I wasn’t careful enough, I led you into a dangerous situation. And think about what could’ve happened if the cable that snapped was higher, you could've been seriously injured because  _ I _ wasn’t careful enough.”

“Okay, cool it with the martyr complex already,” Leonard sighed. This was a side of Jim Kirk he had never seen before, and he wasn’t sure how to navigate it. Especially not when it had been so long since both of them had slept. He supposed he would just have to do the best he could here. “Look, first thing I need you to understand, kid, is you haven’t made me do shit since I met you. I know you think you can charm and play with people to get your way, but fortunately I’m immune from your particular brand of bullshit. You didn’t force me into this, I agreed of my own free will. Don’t flatter yourself into thinking you can take that away from me.”

“Okay,” Jim finally said, after a long pause, “And the second thing?”

“The second thing is...okay, look,” Leonard shook his head, figured he didn’t want to have this conversation walking, and sunk into a nearby bench, “When I was still a resident, I made a mistake in a surgery. The patient ended up being fine, but it was touch and go for a bit there. And ya know what, I tortured myself about that for weeks. I second guessed every single decision I made, and I spent all my free time thinking about what  _ could’ve  _ happened. He could’ve died, or ended up paralyzed, or with permanent brain damage. And it would’ve been my fault. Eventually one of the attendings pulled me aside, gave me a real talking to about letting go and not dwelling on the what-ifs. Because I couldn’t be a good surgeon if I questioned my own decisions all the time. And you, kid...I don’t mean to stroke your ego, but you’re not only gonna be a captain someday but you’ll be a damn good one. I know you, and there’s no chance in hell you won’t achieve something you’re chasing this hard. You’re going to be responsible for decisions for a whole ship’s worth of people. Sometimes you may make the wrong calls, that’s just  _ life _ . But I promise you, Jim, that spending all your time torturing yourself over what could have happened when you make a mistake, or blaming yourself when something does go wrong, isn’t productive. Take an experience, learn from it, but do not let yourself spiral into hypotheticals. Trust me, that don’t lead nowhere good.”

Jim had sat down next to him but didn’t say anything right away. When he finally did it was to let out a breathy laugh and say,

“You sound like Pike.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“By who?”   


“Well, you, for one.”

Jim didn’t reply to that, he just stood up and started walking again. The kid was some kind of perpetual motion machine, Leonard really shouldn’t have expected him to take this conversation sitting down.

“I’m sorry, it’s late and I just…” Jim started and Leonard cut him off with a shake of his head,

“No. Don’t apologize for feeling, Jim.”

“I’m not used to this, is all.”

“Not used to what?”

“Letting myself care about people,” Jim admitted and Leonard nearly froze at the enormity of that. Surely Jim never would have said anything like that if it was 0400 and he wasn’t coming off an adrenaline crash of his own. But Leonard didn’t doubt the sincerity of it, and he didn’t want to freak Jim out by reacting too strongly. But he did have to say something. He settled for the truth.

“Well, you’re a natural.”

“People always leave.”

“I ain’t going nowhere.”

“I think I believe that.”

“Good.”

“I’m still sorry about what happened.”

“And I’m still not mad,” Leonard reassured him and Jim smiled softly in return. The expression looked a bit odd on Jim’s face, but it was a good kind of odd, one that made him feel sort of strange. Acting on impulse, he swung his arm around Jim’s shoulders and Jim leaned in as they walked.

“Is it always like this?” Jim asked as they approached Academy grounds, Leonard’s arm still around his shoulders.

“Dark and cold in the middle of the night in San Francisco? Yeah,” Leonard answered even though he was sure that wasn’t what Jim was talking about.

“No, I mean...when you let yourself care about people, does it always feel this shitty when you realize that someday, somehow you could lose them?”

“Well, you can’t very well have love without vulnerability, and love’s all we got. When ya love someone, it can be scary to think about endings because endings invariably hurt like a bitch. I tried to run from that, after Jocelyn, but what I’m starting to realize is that it’s actually always worth it.”

“That’s kind of beautiful, Bones,” Jim said and Leonard simply shrugged. The hour was tearing down his walls too, and he was glad he was with Jim, where he didn’t have to worry about what would happen if they came crashing down. 

“Wait, you...love me?” Jim asked, his voice sounding like he had just discovered something previously thought to be impossible, like the equation for trans-warp beaming or something equally unlikely. It sort of hurt to hear. Leonard wondered how long it had been since someone had said those words to Jim and meant them. 

“Of course I love you, Jim,” Leonard shook his head, “You’re the best damn friend I’ve ever had. Don’t doubt that.”

“I love you too, Bones,” Jim said, and the words sounded a bit like he was trying to speak in a foreign language he didn’t know very well, but Leonard knew he meant them all the same. Leonard had never been good at conversations like this, and in Jim he had found someone who was even worse, but they had somehow stumbled into one of the most important things Leonard had ever had in his life. And he found himself strangely grateful for buildings with dark energy and dislocated knees and late nights. Because words weren’t everything but they were a lot, they mattered, and in Leonard’s opinion they mattered a whole hell of a lot.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few logistics I'd like to get out of the way before the start of the final chapter.
> 
> My original plan was 8 chapters and an epilogue, however now I have two epilogues I want to write for this story and they're a bit removed in time from this so I've decided to make them one shot sequels. This chapter resolves the plot arc, the interpersonal arc will be resolved in the one shot sequels. It's really just a matter of personal preference when it comes to organization, but I thought you should know going into this that this is not the end.
> 
> That said, I hope you enjoy!

“It’s not like you to just give up,” Leonard said casually as he nursed his coffee on the couch and looked over his notes on his PADD one last time. 

“Bones, what are you talking about?” Jim asked from their little kitchenette, where he was sitting on the counter eating a protein bar with his own coffee in hand. There were dark circles under Jim’s eyes, and his entire demeanor seemed slightly less upbeat than usual. Finals were wearing on him, that much was clear. He was taking his last exams today, which was a damn good thing because that kid needed sleep and he needed it now. Granted, by the time he had to face the outside world, there would be a pep in Jim’s step and a shine in those bright blue eyes, but it would all be an act. He had this strange aversion to letting anyone know just how hard he was working for this. Leonard didn’t care if people knew he was trying and, well, this was a hell of a lot easier than medical school anyways, so he was only a little worse for the wear. Unlike Jim, who looked not unlike he had just gotten run over by a lev train. Figures. Maybe he threw the bet because he just needed a weekend off and knew Leonard’s plans would be more relaxing than his own. At that thought, Leonard decided maybe he shouldn’t be bringing this up after all.

“Nothin’, never mind,” he finally responded to his friend.

Jim threw an empty takeout container he had forgotten to put in the reprocessor the night before at Leonard’s head and demanded,

“Spill.”

“I’m not cleaning that up,” Leonard declared, indicating the bits of sauce that had flown free from the container and scattered across their floor. Jim kept looking at him, though, so he sighed, “I’m just surprised you gave up the bet is all.”

“The…” Jim shook his head, “Seriously?”

“What?” Leonard asked. It was odd, he thought, that they hadn’t been out of any of Jim’s little ghost hunting adventures in the two months since that night at the old hospital. What had once been a weekly activity had fallen by the wayside without a single word of explanation from his friend. 

“I thought the bet was off,” Jim said simply.

“Why the hell would you think that? Did we have that conversation? And remember, saying things at me while I’m asleep  _ does not _ count.”

“I figured that after what happened last time there wasn’t a chance in hell you’d want to go back out there again, and I get it. I wasn’t going to hold you to it or anything.”

“What happened last time?” Leonard fought back a groan, “You’re not seriously still hung up on my stupid knee, are you? It’s been two months.”

“I’m not talking about your knee, I’m talking about…” Jim paused, hopped off the counter, and took a seat next to Leonard on the couch, “Are you being serious with me right now?”   


“Yes? Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m talking about that damn ghost that was in the hospital, and I think you know that.”

Leonard had not known that. That whole night had been so overwhelming, he had dislocated his knee, spent several hours in a random ass hospital in the middle of nowhere, and had ended up having the most emotionally vulnerable conversation him and Jim had ever had. The “ghost” had quickly gone out of his mind and had been replaced by more important things. Upon thinking back on that night, it  _ had _ been a bit odd. But there had to have been some rational explanation for it all.

Jim knitted thick brows together and continued, “Oh, I can’t wait to hear how you’re rationalizing this one.”

“I hadn’t thought of it much,” Leonard said, taking another sip of his coffee, “But I’m sure there’s a good reason for what happened.”   


“Whatever was in there was communicating with you! Bones, it was practically controlling you!”

“Oh, now that’s just absurd.”

“You don’t remember that night like I do.”

“What, and I assume your version of the events is the truth, then?”

“The thing actually hurt you!”   


“The inconvenient snapping of some old cables on the most dramatic staircase I’ve ever seen is not proof of a ghost attack. Besides, if the accident had actually been caused by a malevolent presence, don’t ya think it would’ve snapped a higher cable? I wasn’t even two meters off the ground.”

“If we had continued going down that hallway…”

“Jim,” Leonard said. This conversation was going nowhere, and he didn’t need to have an argument with his best friend right before he went in for his last final.

“Fine,” Jim shook his head, “Fine, Bones, believe what you want.”

“You forfeit then?” Leonard asked, right eyebrow arched in a clear challenge.

“You really want to go back out there?”

“Want is a strong word. I don’t want to any less than I did before.”

“Fine,” Jim said, taking a final sip of his own coffee and depositing his mug on the coffee table, “One last go?”

“One last go,” Leonard agreed, too late wondering if this had really been a good idea.

“How was your last final? Did you kill anyone?” Jim asked Leonard the second they were within earshot in the quad, where Jim had arranged for them to meet earlier.

“It was a medical ethics exam,” Leonard said simply, eyeing the duffel swung over Jim’s shoulder with suspicion. He didn’t know what that meant, but he doubted it was a good sign.

“I know!” Jim said brightly, “But you hated that class and I noticed you didn’t answer my question.”   


“I didn’t  _ hate _ it, it was just…” Leonard started but Jim cut him off,

“Redundant because you had to take essentially the same thing in medical school, I know, I know. Come on, we have to go or we’ll be late.”

Leonard rolled his eyes and followed his best friend as they began to walk across campus. The pair walked shoulder to shoulder, chatting casually about the conclusion of their exams and Jim’s upcoming starship posting over the summer. He tried not to spoil Jim’s mood by dwelling too much on how much he would miss his friend while they were separated all summer. The one benefit of Jim’s absence was that it would give him more uninterrupted lab time, so hopefully he could graduate in three years alongside the other man. That was the idea, at least.

Jim led them not to the edge of campus, like Leonard had been assuming, but to one of the undergraduate dorm buildings. In fact, the building Jim swiped his ID at had been his building the previous year. They took the lift up to the 4th floor and sure enough they headed right to Jim’s old room, where a lanky and impossibly young 1st year cadet was standing outside the door with his uniform jacket slung over his shoulders. 

The young man gave them a skeptical look then sighed,

“I didn’t know there were going to be two of you. This isn’t a sex thing, is it?”

Jim, normally one to lean into these kinds of situations, instead blushed deeply and sputtered a little. Leonard rolled his eyes and answered in his friend’s stead,

“I’m not entirely sure what we’re doing here, but I can assure you it most definitely is not a sex thing.”

“Well, make sure you clean up when you’re done,” the other cadet said with a shrug, “Door code is 392A3E. Don’t touch any of our shit.”

“Got it. Thanks so much for this, Fletcher! Say hello to your girlfriend for me,” Jim grinned, charming as ever, all traces of his embarrassment long gone.

Fletcher smiled back then headed for the lift as Jim punched the code into the door, which opened with a light hiss.

“How come that gangly child has a girlfriend and the both of us are still single?” Leonard complained as he walked into Jim’s old room. “Maybe I need to go out more this summer.”

“Oh, come on!” Jim protested, “I’ve been trying to get you to meet people for 2 years and now that I’m going to be gone all summer you’re finally going to do it?”

“I’m gonna be bored to tears this summer. You take up all my time, what the hell do I need a damn significant other for?”

“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

“I’ll leave that one up to you, kid.”

“That doesn’t sound promising,” Jim remarked, throwing the duffel on one of the beds. His old one, if Leonard remembered correctly. 

“What the hell are we doing here anyways?” Leonard asked, finally getting to the point. Jim’s old dorm room was just about the last place he expected to be going tonight. But he supposed there were worse places to be.

“Fletcher is in the hand-to-hand section I TA. I saw in his file he’s in my old room, and I proctored that exam today and asked if we could crash here tonight. His roommate got an early starship posting and took his finals last week and Fletcher is dating some 3rd year Denobulan girl that’s  _ way _ too hot for him so he’s just gonna stay with her tonight. The place is ours until noon tomorrow.”

“I’ll admit, I was expecting something a bit more exotic than a sleepover in your old dorm room.”

“You may recall this place is haunted as hell,” Jim reminded him, “The ghost is friendly so there’s no risk of repeating last time, but he’s usually pretty active. I figured why reinvent the wheel?”

“Well, it’s only 20:00 and nowhere near dark yet, so I hope you have some plans for tonight other than waiting for this so-called ghost to want to chat. And I hope you brought some booze.”

“No booze, sorry Bones. If we do get anything and you’ve even had a hint of a drink you’re going to blame it all on that, even if you’re still completely sober. I know you. I did bring a change of clothes for each of us though, and a pack of cards. Plus I’ve got a shit ton of movies on my PADD.”

“Nothing made before this century,” Leonard stipulated, knowing his friend’s occasional fascination with old movies and not being in the mood for terrible graphics rendering and outdated ideas that night.

“Oh, you take all the fun out of it,” Jim teased.

Jim fell asleep about 2 minutes into the movie, his head on a pile of blankets and his feet tucked into Leonard’s side on the floor. It was a good thing, too, the kid really needed sleep. Leonard ruffled Jim’s hair a bit, feeling strangely affectionate to his friend’s sleeping form, but otherwise continued on watching the movie. He had been wanting to see this one for a while. 

After the movie ended, he spent about half an hour killing all his brain cells scrolling through the Academy forums on his own PADD, and was actually in the middle of arguing with one of his fellow cadets when Jim woke up.

“Did’ya stop the movie?” Jim mumbled, stretching as he sat up.

“Movie’s over, Jim,” Leonard replied, looking up from the angry response he was typing out, “You’ve been out for 3 hours.”

“Damn, sorry Bones. You should’ve woken me up.”

“You needed the rest. I promise I would’ve woken you up if your so-called ghost showed up.”

Jim nodded then leaned over to look at Leonard’s PADD and laughed,

“Wait, are you anonymously arguing with someone on the Academy forums?”

“This jackass is saying…”

“Who cares what the jackass is saying? Let it go, Bones.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” Leonard said, but as he sent off his last response he closed out of the forum and threw his PADD up on one of the beds. He usually wouldn’t back down from an argument so easily, but it really was a waste of time arguing on these forums. Maybe he needed some sleep himself. 

“So, Hector didn’t make an appearance then?” Jim asked and Leonard quirked an eyebrow,

“Hector? I thought you said the guys in this room would be gone for the night.”

“Hector’s the ghost!” Jim explained in a tone that made it sound like that should’ve been obvious. 

“You named it?”

“Had to call him something.”   


“You don’t even know if he’s a ‘him’ in the first place.”   


“Whatever. So, are you ready?”

“Ready for what, exactly?”

“You know how you said back at the hospital that if you were going to try to open yourself up to something like this it wouldn’t be in a place that felt like that?”   


“Yeah?”   


“I figured what better place for you to try to open yourself for a good ghost experience than a place where we know the ghost is  _ good _ ? Hector won’t hurt us.”   


“I don’t exactly know what ‘opening myself up to it’ entails,” Leonard admitted. When he had said that, he had mostly been talking about opening his mind to the potential that ghosts were real, but Jim seemed to be talking about somehow channeling an experience with a ghost. Even if ghosts were a thing, even if that was possible, he had no idea where to start.

“Let’s just start with introductions,” Jim suggested, then knocked three times on one of the desks, “Hey, Hector! You around? It’s Jim Kirk, from last year. Do you remember me? And this here is my friend Bones. You may remember him as well. He’s got like ESP or something, but he doesn’t like it when I say that.”

“Damn straight,” Leonard mumbled.

“Bones? Are you gonna introduce yourself?” Jim prompted.

“Didn’t you just do that for me?” Leonard asked, but in that moment he made a decision. He was just going to roll with whatever happened here tonight. Just for tonight, he would follow his friend’s whims and act like he believed in ghosts. He felt safe here, he always had, and figured that maybe if he wasn’t actively fighting it then something would actually happen to convince him. And if not, well, then he looked like an idiot with his best friend for a few hours. There were worse things to happen.

Jim was still looking at him expectantly so he sighed,

“Hello, Hector, or whatever your name is. Name’s Leonard McCoy.”

He was talking to air. He felt stupid. But Jim was grinning at him in a way that made the lunacy of all this seem worth it.

“Bones doesn’t believe you’re actually here,” Jim said, talking to the ghost but looking at Leonard, “But he’s willing to be convinced. You may find it easier to talk to him than you did to me. We’ve got all night if you’d like to chat. I bet it’s boring, being dead.”

“I bet it’s a nightmare being dead and stuck in a dorm room for your entire afterlife,” Leonard shuddered for effect, “God, the things you’d see. If there  _ is _ anything here, it’s a wonder it’s not malicious with all it’s seen.”

“Uh, yeah, sorry about that one buddy,” Jim laughed then addressed Leonard, “Are you getting anything?”

Leonard was quiet for a few moments, thinking. There was a  _ something _ here. He wasn’t sure what, though. He recognized the feeling from being in this room last year, but it was a new one when compared to his other experiences with Jim. It was close to what the library had been like a few months ago, but different. At the library he had felt peaceful, calm, and resigned to the way things were. The peace was still there, but this time it was accompanied by a sense of happiness, gratitude, and being loved. No wonder he never paid any attention to this feeling before, it was pretty much just an intensified version of what he usually felt with Jim anyways. It was a good feeling, completely nonthreatening. He felt certain that if this was being caused by some sort of entity, then it presented no risk to either him or Jim. 

“You are, aren’t you?” Jim asked and Leonard realized he had never answered his friend’s question.

“Yeah, Jim,” he said quietly, for some reason loath to risk breaking the peaceful feeling he was having. And then, for a reason he understood even less, he spoke again, but not to Jim this time, 

“I don’t know how you communicate, but I’m willing to listen if you’ve got somethin’ to say.”

Jim grinned broadly but said nothing, which was a damn good thing because Leonard probably wouldn’t have heard him anyways. Because as soon as Leonard finished speaking, something happened. He was sitting on the floor with Jim, he was conscious of that and could even still see the expression of excitement and anticipation in his friend’s face. But at the same time he was standing and looking out at the Bay on what he instinctively realized was the Presidio, shoulder to shoulder with a red headed man in an old fashioned uniform. That faded and then he was marching in some sort of military parade. And then there was a shaking, everything was falling, he was looking at a crumbled room full of debris, he was being held by the same red head from earlier, and then it was all over as quickly as it began.

Leonard gasped and suddenly the calm presence was gone.

“No, wait, I’m fine, it’s okay, I just wasn’t expecting that is all.”

The presence slowly returned, but the images did not. Jim whispered “Bones,” but Leonard barely heard it over his own heavy breathing. Holy shit. Holy  _ shit _ . 

“Bones,” Jim repeated, grabbing his knee, “You okay?”

“Can I tell him?” Leonard asked, still not talking to his friend. The affirmative wasn’t verbal, but he knew it was a yes all the same.

“Bones,” Jim said, more stern this time. Leonard forced himself to face the other man and nodded,

“I’m fine, Jim. He just...showed me something. Never had anything like that happen to me before.”

“What was it like?” Jim asked, bright blue eyes wide and sparkling with curiosity. 

“It’s hard to explain. I was here the whole time, I never stopped seeing you, but at the same time...I think I was seeing things from his eyes. Just a few moments. With a friend at the Presidio, in some sorta parade, and, well, I’m pretty sure it was his death. In the arms of his friend.”

“How did he die?”   


“Earthquake.”

“When?”   


“Long time ago. I think...back when this place was an American military installation. So whenever that was.”

“1906 San Francisco earthquake?

“Yeah,” Leonard confirmed, feeling strangely certain of that despite not actually having any way to confirm it.

“Shit,” Jim breathed, “That’s incredible. Bones, that’s incredible. And, well, I’m really sorry that happened to you, Hector. You seem like a good guy.”

“I don’t think his name was Hector.”   


“So what was it? I tried to get him to write his name on my PADD last year, but nothing. Maybe you’ll have better luck. You seem to have a connection with him.”

Leonard looked from Jim’s PADD, then back up to his friend, then at the PADD again, and he suddenly was aware of what the problem was.

“He doesn’t know how to work that thing. They didn’t have anything like it back in his day.”

A strange expression passed over Jim’s face, like he was annoyed he hadn’t thought of that earlier, and then he was on his feet and tearing through the stack of papers on one of the desks before he finally sat back down with a blank sheet of paper and a pen. Oh, so that’s where he was going with this.

Jim placed the pen and paper between him and Leonard, then looked at his friend and waited.

“Use this,” Leonard suggested, “We’d love to know what to call you. Write down your name. It’s okay.”

Despite everything, he didn’t expect anything to happen. And for a few seconds, nothing did. But then, slowly and carefully, the pen began to rise from the ground. He felt like he had just been punched in the gut as ink started to appear on the paper. Not wanting to miss his friend’s reaction to this, he chanced a look up at Jim, who was watching this all with eyes so wide they were nearly cartoonish, but then he turned his attention back to the paper and that damn pen that was writing on its own.

It took a few minutes, but finally the pen dropped back to the floor and Leonard looked at the jagged handwriting on the page and read it aloud, his own voice shaking as he did so,

“Joseph. It’s nice to meet you Joseph.”

“Joseph,” Jim repeated, obviously completely in awe of what had just happened. Leonard understood the feeling. He could scarcely believe it himself. If someone else had told him this, he would have laughed it off, but seeing it happen, well, that was harder to discount. 

“That took a lot out of him,” he said, interpreting the feeling that he couldn’t come close to describing, but was there nonetheless. “That level of communication is difficult, he’s not sure how much longer he can stay.”

Jim nodded in understanding, “Well, thank you Joseph. You’ve been extremely helpful. And for the record, you were an excellent roommate.”

“He has a difficult time understanding you.”

“Can you tell him for me, then?”

“Thank you for your time, Joseph. We’re both grateful. And Jim here expresses his thanks for making sure he got to classes on time last term, and apologizes for all the times you saw him having sex,” Leonard added.

“Bones!” Jim swatted at his friend in mock offense.

“Actually, I get the impression that he didn’t mind that much.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.”

Leonard just laughed and the presence receded but he was left with one last impression.

“He’s glad you’re happy, Jim. It seems he gets rather attached to the students that come through here.”

“Well, tell him thanks again.”   


“He’s gone.”

What followed was a long silence between the two friends, both of them just looking at each other as the magnitude of what had happened slowly sunk in for both, but for Leonard especially. It was an odd feeling. It should’ve felt like this night turned his entire world upside down, but for some reason it didn’t. It almost felt...freeing. Like this had taken a weight off his shoulders. He opened his mouth to voice that to Jim, but then caught a glance at the chrono on the wall and closed his mouth again. A minute later, he finally spoke,

“Well, I can’t explain  _ that _ away.”

“So you’re saying you believe in ghosts now?” Jim asked, blue eyes still blown wide with shock, but now also amusement and hope.

“I’m saying,” Leonard started, choosing his words carefully, “That in certain rare circumstances there may be some sorta energy left behind when a person dies.”

“Yeah, Bones, that’s a ghost. You’re saying you admit that what we just saw was a ghost.”

“Sure. But this is not retroactive. Most of those other places we went were nothing but horseshit.”   


“Whatever helps you sleep at night, man. But, I think you will find that this means I win.”   


“I think you will find that it doesn’t.”

“What do you mean?! The bet was I could make you believe in ghosts…”

“Before the end of term,” Leonard reminded the younger man, “You may notice that the term ended two minutes ago.”

Jim glanced up at the chrono and then all but squawked, “Technicality!”

“You were pushin’ it to begin with, having us go out after we finished finals. Today, Jim, is firmly after term. And I don’t get the feeling that Joseph will be back tonight and I would love to sleep in my own bed, so can we just go?”

Jim agreed, and they gathered up their things and Jim shoved them back in his duffle and they headed out into the night. 

“I still don’t think you won this,” Jim argued as they began the walk back to their dorm. Campus was quiet at this hour. Most of the other cadets were probably still at bars or parties, celebrating the end of another difficult semester.

“Rules are rules,” Leonard shrugged.

“I would be willing to call it a tie.”   


“And what would a tie entail, exactly?”

“You take tomorrow night. I take Saturday night.”

That didn’t sound like a terrible idea and really Jim was right, the bet  _ had  _ been decided on a simple technicality, so Leonard nodded, “I’ll agree to that. You sure you don’t want tomorrow night?”

“Nope. Bones, I am going to take us to the hottest spots in San Francisco this weekend. But man I’ve slept like 15 hours all week and I don’t know what you’ve got in store but it’s probably marginally more relaxing. You get tomorrow.”

“God, Jim, I’m way too old to go to a  _ club _ .”

“You’re 30! That’s not that old!”

“I hate clubs,” Leonard grumbled. He wasn’t a big dancer. Give him a good bar with decent whiskey, a pool table, and music just loud enough to hear but quiet enough to talk over any day, but clubs? Not for him.

“Oh, quit whining,” Jim laughed and swung his arm over Leonard’s shoulder. Suddenly his tone was quieter, “Thanks for doing this with me, Bones. I had a blast.”

“I can’t always agree, but it was nice spending some time with you on Friday nights. Maybe we should keep that up?” Leonard caught his friend’s eye and smiled.

“Definitely,” Jim agreed, squeezing Leonard’s shoulder and drawing them a touch closer as they walked. Jim used his free hand to gesture towards the sky, “Just think, Bones. One more year and we’ll be out there. You and me. Captain and CMO.”

“ _ Next year _ ? I doubt that.”

“I had thought you would’ve learned not to bet against me by now,” Jim laughed, “And sure maybe next year’s a stretch, but eventually…”

“Yeah,” Leonard agreed, “Eventually.”


End file.
